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James I of Aragon
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Nos, don Iavmes, por la g[rat]ia de Dius Rey d'Aragon et de Maillorgas et de Valencia, conte de Barçalona et de Urgel et seynor de Montpesler [...]
'We, Don James, by the grace of God King of Aragon and of Majorca and of Valencia, Count of Barcelona and of Urgell and Lord of Montpellier'.
James[lower-alpha 1] I of Aragon the Conqueror (Aragonese: Chaime lo Conqueridor, Occitan: Jacme lo Conquistaire, Catalan: Jaume el Conqueridor) (Montpellier, February 2, 1208 – Alzira, July 27, 1276) was King of Aragon (1213–1276), of Valencia (1238–1276) and of Majorca (1229–1276), Count of Barcelona (1213–1276), Count of Urgell, Lord of Montpellier (1219–1276) and of other fiefs in Occitania.
Youth
The son of Peter II the Catholic and Mary of Montpellier, he was the heir of two important lineages: the House of Aragon and that of the Emperors of Byzantium, on his mother's side. He had a difficult childhood. His father, who would end up repudiating the Queen, only came to conceive him through a deception by some nobles and churchmen who feared the lack of a successor, with the collaboration of Mary, making Peter believe that he was sleeping with one of his mistresses. These circumstances led to Peter II's rejection of the young James, whom he did not meet until two years after his birth.[4] At that age, the King made a marriage pact to hand his son James over to the guardianship of Simon, Lord of Montfort, in order to marry him to the latter's daughter, Amicia, for which purpose the child was to be confined in the castle of Carcassonne until the age of 18.[4]
Upon the death of his father during the Albigensian Crusade, at the Battle of Muret (1213), Simon de Montfort resisted handing James over to the Aragonese until after a year of demands, and only by order of Pope Innocent III. During his minority, he was under the guardianship of the Knights Templar in the castle of Monzón, having been entrusted to Guillermo de Montredón,[5] together with his cousin of the same age, the Count of Provence Ramon Berenguer V. Meanwhile, Count Sancho Raimúndez, son of Petronilla of Aragon and Ramon Berenguer IV and James's great-uncle, acted as regent of the kingdom. He inherited the Lordship of Montpellier upon the death of his mother (1213).
Orphaned of both father and mother, he was about 6 years old when he was sworn in at the Cortes of Lleida of 1214. In September 1218, general Cortes were held for the first time in Lleida, at which he was declared of age.
In February 1221 he married in the Sorian town of Ágreda,[6] a border town between Castile and Aragon, Eleanor of Castile, sister of Queen Berengaria of Castile and aunt of Ferdinand III. After the wedding the couple moved to the cathedral of Tarazona, where James was knighted. His first marriage having been annulled on grounds of kinship in 1229, he married for the second time Princess Violant (September 8, 1235), daughter of Andrew II, King of Hungary. By the will of his first cousin once removed Nuño Sánchez, he inherited the counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya and the viscounty of Fenouillèdes in France (1241).
Reign
During the first fifteen years of his reign, he waged various struggles against the Aragonese nobility, which even took him prisoner in 1224. In 1227 he faced a new Aragonese noble uprising, led by the Infante Ferdinand, the King's uncle, which ended, thanks to papal intervention through the Archbishop of Tortosa, with the signing of the Concord of Alcalá (March 1227). This treaty marked the triumph of the monarchy over the unruly nobles, giving it the stability needed to begin the campaigns against the Muslims. This stability succeeded in appeasing the demands of the nobility and the bishops.
Conquest of Majorca
Faced with the attacks of the Majorcan pirates, the merchants of Barcelona, Tarragona and Tortosa asked the monarch for help to put an end to the threat. Thus, at a meeting in Barcelona (December 1228) they offered him their ships, while the Catalan nobles agreed to take part in the enterprise in exchange for booty and territorial domains. At another meeting in Lleida, the Aragonese nobles accepted the same conditions, but suggested to the King that the enterprise be directed against the Muslims of Valencia, so their participation would not be significant.
On September 5, 1229, the Aragonese fleet, made up of 155 ships, 1,500 knights and 15,000 soldiers, set sail from Tarragona, Salou and Cambrils,[7] to conquer Majorca from Abu Yahya, the semi-independent Almohad governor of the island.
The Aragonese troops landed at Santa Ponsa and defeated the Muslims at the Battle of Portopí (September 13, 1229). The Muslims took refuge behind the walls of Madina Mayurqa (present-day Palma de Mallorca) and crucified several Aragonese soldiers in sight of James's troops. Shortly afterwards these troops took the city and put its population to the sword (December 1229), and seized the island within a few months, except for a small pocket of Muslim resistance that managed to hold out in the Serra de Tramuntana until 1232. The Muslim inhabitants fled to Africa or were enslaved.
After the population of Madina Mayurqa had been put to the sword, the number of corpses was such that an epidemic broke out which decimated the army of James I. In addition, the Catalan nobles tried to keep the booty for themselves, provoking a revolt that would further weaken the military power of James I.
Majorca was constituted as one more kingdom of the Crown of Aragon under the name Regnum Maioricarum et insulae adiacentes, which obtained a charter of franchise in 1230. The establishment in 1249 of the municipality of Majorca (present-day Palma) would contribute to the institutionalization of the kingdom.
Conquest of Menorca
The Aragonese monarch found himself unable to conquer Menorca because of the internal divisions within his army over the booty and the reduction of his army due to some bad decisions; even so, the monarch obtained, through the mediation of two Aragonese nobles (Pedro Maza and Assalido de Gudal), a Catalan noble (Bernaldo de Santa Eugenia) and the commander of the Temple of Majorca (Ramón de Serra), a vassalage over Menorca, ratified by the Treaty of Capdepera, by which the Menorcan Muslims accepted his sovereignty (1231). The vassalage over Menorca would be transferred to the Kingdom of Majorca as part of the will of James I. Alfonso III of Aragon would effectively conquer this island after the capitulation of Abû ‘Umar in 1287. It was repopulated, although a large Muslim population remained, which was later banished.
Conquest of Ibiza and Formentera
He ceded the submission of Ibiza and Formentera to Guillermo de Montgrí, archbishop of Tarragona, and his brother Bernardo de Santa Eugenia, who carried it out in 1235. The island was repopulated with peasants from Empúries (1236).
Conquest of Valencia
The conquest of Valencia, unlike that of Majorca, was carried out with a large contingent of Aragonese. Thus, to begin the conquest, in 1231 James I met with the nobleman Blasco de Alagón and Hugo de Folcalquier, master of the Military Order of the Hospital, in Alcañiz to set a plan for the conquest of the Valencian lands. Blasco de Alagón recommended besieging the towns on flat ground and avoiding the fortified ones. However, the first places taken were two mountain enclaves: Morella, with Blasco taking advantage of the weakness of its Muslim government; and Ares, a place near Morella taken by James I to force Blasco de Alagón to hand Morella over to him.
The conquest of what would later become the Kingdom of Valencia began in 1232, with the taking of Morella. In 1233 the campaign was planned in Alcañiz; it would consist of three stages:
- The first stage began in 1233, with the taking of Burriana, followed immediately by Peñíscola and the castle of Castellón. The latter would be ceded to the King in 1242 by the so-called "award of the three bishops". The conquest of the city of Valencia had begun on April 21, 1238, and the capitulation was signed on September 29, with the King entering the city on October 9.
- The second stage headed south, reaching the Júcar, at the city of Alzira, where the only bridge in all of Valencia crossing the Júcar was located. This town was conquered on December 30, 1242, thus allowing the definitive conquest of the Kingdom of Valencia.
- The third stage spanned from 1243 to 1245, reaching the limits stipulated in the Treaty of Almizra in 1244, signed between James I and the Infante Alfonso (the future Alfonso X of Castile) to delimit the areas of expansion over Muslim territory between Castile and the Crown of Aragon. The lands south of the Biar-Villajoyosa line were reserved for Castile (including the Kingdom of Murcia), being incorporated into the Kingdom of Valencia by James II of Aragon after the Arbitral Sentences of Torrellas (1304) and the Treaty of Elche (1305).
In this last stage and in the following years, James I had to face various revolts by the Mudéjar population, led by the chieftain al-Azraq.
James I won a great triumph over the Aragonese nobility by turning the lands conquered in Valencia into a distinct kingdom, united to the Crown of Aragon (1239), thanks to the legislative drafting of the Furs of Valencia, els Furs. The creation of the kingdom provoked an irate reaction from the Aragonese nobility, which thus saw the extension of its lordships into Valencian lands made impossible.
Policy beyond the Pyrenees
By the Treaty of Corbeil (1258) James renounced his rights over territories of southern France. In return, Saint Louis of France renounced his rights, as a descendant of Charlemagne, over the Catalan counties, heirs of the Hispanic March.
James I was present at the Second Council of Lyon, which was held in the cathedral of Lyon between May 7 and July 17, 1274. The council deliberated on the preparation of a new crusade, focusing on its financial aspects, for which it was decided that for six years a tithe of all the benefices of Christendom should be allocated to the crusade. James I was in favor of starting it immediately, but since the Templars opposed it, no decision was taken. Faced with the indecision of the other attendees of the canonical assembly, James I took his leave of the Holy Father (Pope Gregory X) and left the meeting with the members of his retinue.
Conquest of the Kingdom of Murcia
Castile had subjected Murcia to vassalage (1243), but the Murcians rebelled against Castile with the support of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada and the rulers of North Africa (1264). Queen Violant (wife of Alfonso X the Wise) asked her father James I for help. Then, troops of the Crown of Aragon commanded by the Infante Peter (the future Peter III the Great) conquered the Kingdom of Murcia from Muhammad ibn Hûd Biha al-Dawla (1265–66), afterwards leaving more than 10,000 Aragonese in Murcia. Indeed, it must be remembered that according to the conditions of the Treaty of Almizra (1244), Murcia would belong to Castile.
Final years
In September 1269 he left Barcelona with his fleet for an expedition to the Holy Land, but with his ships scattered by storms, he had to land at Aigues-Mortes, near Montpellier, and was forced to give up that enterprise.
After a reign of sixty-three years (the longest reign of any monarch in the entire history of Spain), he died in Alzira (Valencia) on July 27, 1276. At the moment of his death, in the royal residence of this city, and as he had ordered, Don James was shrouded in the habit of the Cistercians.
The King's mortal remains remained deposited in Santa María of Valencia until May 1278, when they were moved to the Monastery of Poblet for their definitive burial. However, after the confiscation of Mendizábal, the monastery was abandoned and the body of James I was moved in 1843 to Tarragona, where a pantheon was built for him at the rear of the cathedral, which was inaugurated in 1856. In 1952, the remains of James I were returned to Poblet.[8]
He dictated his biography, the Llibre dels feits, which became the first of the four great royal chronicles in Catalan.
Issue and inheritance
By his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, he had:
- Alfonso (1222–1260), married to Constance of Montcada, daughter of Gaston VII of Béarn; he was the heir to the crown but died before his father.
By his second wife, Violant of Hungary, he had:
- Violant (1236–1301), wife of Alfonso X the Wise.
- Constance (1238–1275), wife of the Lord of Villena, the Castilian Infante Manuel, brother of Alfonso X the Wise.
- Peter (1240–1285; the future Peter III of Aragon), who succeeded him in the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia and in the Catalan counties.
- James (1243–1311; the future James II of Majorca), who inherited the Kingdom of Majorca, which comprised the Balearic Islands —Majorca, Menorca (still under the power of a Muslim sovereign, although tributary since 1231), Ibiza and Formentera—, the counties of Roussillon and Cerdanya and the territories that the Conqueror retained in Occitania (the Lordship of Montpellier, the viscounty of Carladès, in Auvergne, and the barony of Omeladès, adjoining Montpellier).
- Ferdinand (1245–1250), who died as a child.
- Sancha (1246–before 1275), who became a nun and died in the Holy Land.
- Maria (1247–1267), also a nun.
- Isabella (1248–1271), wife of Philip III of France, son of Saint Louis of France (Louis IX of France).
- Sancho (1250–1275), archdeacon of Belchite, abbot of Valladolid and Archbishop of Toledo, who died a prisoner of the Moors of Granada.
Traditionally it has been considered that Violant's desire to obtain good inheritances for her children was the reason why James I proceeded to partition his kingdoms. However, the King's patrimonial conception of the kingdoms seems to make more sense. Thus, he made a first division in his will of 1241. According to this will, the firstborn Alfonso would inherit Aragon and the Catalan counties, and Peter, Violant's son, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Roussillon, Cerdanya and the Occitan possessions. Two years later, a new will introduced his third son into the division. The Catalan counties passed from Alfonso to Peter, who ceded the Balearic Islands, Roussillon, Cerdanya and the Occitan possessions to James. A new will followed in 1248, including the new son, Ferdinand, in the division. Upon the death of Alfonso (1260), he granted a new will (1262), which would give the inheritance its definitive configuration.
After the death of Violant (1253) the King launched into a series of love affairs, having many children. By Teresa Gil de Vidaure he had James, Lord of Jérica, and Peter, Lord of Ayerbe. With Elvira Sarroca he had Jaime Sarroca, Bishop of Huesca, and Pedro del Rey, Bishop of Lleida. From his love affair with Blanca de Antillón was born Fernán Sánchez, to whom he gave the barony of Castro; with Berenguela Fernández he had Pedro Fernández, lord of the barony of Híjar, while with Berenguela Alfonso, daughter of the Infante Alfonso of Molina, he had no issue. These royal bastards were the origin of some of the most important noble houses of Aragon and Valencia.
Assessments
The reign of James I marked the birth of a territorial consciousness in the different kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon, especially in Aragon, the Kingdom of Valencia and the Catalan counties. Two factors contributed to this: the standardization of law and the transformation of the Cortes into a body that asserted and represented the will of the kingdom; these acted as catalysts for the creation of a distinctive consciousness in each territory. The Fueros of Aragon were promulgated at the Cortes of Huesca (1247), replacing the various local codes of the kingdom. The Usatges of Barcelona, thanks to royal protection, spread throughout all the Catalan counties (mid-13th century). The situation in Valencia was different, since the opposition of the Aragonese nobility to the consolidation of the kingdom meant that the Valencian fueros (Foris et consuetudines Valentiae), granted by James I in 1240, did not definitively prevail until 1329. In 1244, James I established that the river Cinca would be the dividing line between Aragon and the Catalan counties. From then on, the Cortes of each territory met separately.
The reign of James I also marked the shift of the monarchy's center of gravity toward the Mediterranean coast. Thus, the Court and the chancery —the basis of the present-day Archive of the Crown of Aragon— were established in Barcelona.
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The milestones of his reign include:
- The creation of the kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia.
- The marriage of the heir to the Crown, Peter, to Constance II of Sicily, which would give a definitive impetus to the Mediterranean expansion of the Crown of Aragon, once the Reconquista in peninsular territory had concluded.
- The impetus given to trade and to North African policy, including the drafting of the Llibre del Consolat de Mar, the first code of maritime customs.
- The protection given to the Jews.
- The monetary reforms, with the introduction of the gros of Montpellier and the creation of separate coinages in the kingdoms of Valencia and Majorca.
- The intervention in legal standardization, supporting figures such as Raymond of Penyafort or Vidal de Canellas and promoting Roman law.
- The impetus given to the general institutions of the kingdom, such as the Cortes, and the town councils.
- The dictation of the Llibre dels feits —published after his death—, considered the first medieval chronicle of the Crown of Aragon.
The childhood of James I was spent in the castle of Monzón, beside the river Cinca, and it is where he learned the living speech under the care of the Master of the Order of the Temple. His autobiography shows a constant familiarity with the four estates of power of Aragon and the friendship with which he treats "Pere de Muncada", who recruited knights for him in the border territory between Aragon and the Catalan counties, from the towns of Almenar and Tamarite. The double form in which he writes the place name Monzón is a trace showing that he mastered both the living speech of the area in the form "Monçó" and the written form with the spelling "Muntsó" in the manuscript preserved in the National Library in Madrid.
The historical judgment on James I depends on the kingdom on which the historian focuses. For Aragonese historians the conclusions tend to be negative, citing the patrimonial character he gave to his kingdoms, with no qualms about dividing his domains among his children. Also criticized is the fixing of the Catalan-Aragonese border at the Cinca, which meant the final allocation of Lleida to the Catalan counties and the definitive separation of Aragon and the Catalan counties into two entities with different law and Cortes, after having been united for a hundred years. The territorial expansion is also judged negatively, since with the conquest and creation of the kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia, the Crown definitively became an entity of confederal character, with the monarchy as the only common institution and without any common aspiration among the various kingdoms.
On the other hand, for Majorcans and Valencians, the assessment is completely the opposite: James I is a great king, the founding father of the kingdoms, the creator of their hallmarks of identity down to our own day: territory, language, fueros, currency, institutions, etc.
Ancestors
Ancestors of James I of Aragon
- 1. James I of Aragon
- 2. Peter II of Aragon
- 3. Mary of Montpellier
- 4. Alfonso II of Aragon
- 5. Sancha of Castile
- 6. William VIII of Montpellier
- 7. Eudokia Komnene
- 8. Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona
- 9. Petronilla of Aragon
- 10. Alfonso VII of León
- 11. Richeza of Poland
- 12. William VII of Montpellier
- 13. Matilda of Burgundy
- 14. Isaac Komnenos
- 15. Irene Synadene
- 16. Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona
- 17. Douce of Provence
- 18. Ramiro II of Aragon
- 19. Agnes of Poitou
- 20. Raymond of Burgundy
- 21. Urraca I of León
- 22. Władysław II the Exile
- 23. Agnes of Babenberg
- 24. William VI of Montpellier
- 25. Sibylla
- 26. Hugh II of Burgundy
- 27. Matilda of Touraine
- 28. John II Komnenos
- 29. Piroska of Hungary
Notes
- ↑ "This monarch should have been named Alfonso, like his grandfather, but the special circumstances of his birth, with ill-matched parents in the process of a marriage annulment, must for that reason have broken with the traditional naming practices. To baptize him, twelve candles were lit, each bearing the name of one of the apostles. The last one to go out was the one corresponding to Saint James the Greater, and for that reason this name was given to the newborn."[3]
References
- ↑ Jocelyn Hillgarth (1976). The Spanish Kingdoms (1250-1516). Oxford University Press. ISBN 019822530x.
{{cite book}}: Check|isbn=value: invalid character (help) - ↑ Jaspert, Nikolas (1997). "Heresy and Holyness in a Mediterranean Dynasty: the House of Barcelona in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries". In Dionisius Agius, Ian Richard Netton (ed.). Across the Mediterranean Frontiers. Trade, Politics and Religion, 650-1450. Turnhout: Brepols. pp. 105–135. ISBN 2-503-50600-3.
{{cite book}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ↑ Salazar y Acha 2006, pp. 1–2, n. 4.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Herradón 2008, p. 12.
- ↑ Herradón 2008, p. 14.
- ↑ Belenguer 2008, p. 63.
- ↑ Herradón 2008, p. 15.
- ↑ S. Sobrequés i Callicó, Els reis catalans enterrats a Poblet, Publicaciones de la Abadía de Poblet, 2nd ed., 2001, p. 30.
Bibliography
- Belenguer, Ernest (2008). Jaime I y su reinado (in español). Editorial Milenio. ISBN 978-84-9743-246-7.
- Herradón, Oscar (2008). "Jaime I el Conquistador, el rey cruzado". Historia de Iberia Vieja: revista de historia de España (in español) (39). ISSN 1699-7913.
- Salazar y Acha, Jaime de (2006). "Urraca. Un nombre egregio en la onomástica altomedieval". En la España Medieval (in español). Anejo I: 29–47.
- Sánchez-Albornoz, Claudio (2005). España, un enigma histórico (in español). Edhasa. ISBN 84-350-2608-6.
Further reading
- Huici Miranda, Ambrosio and Cabanes Pecourt, María Desamparados: Documentos de Jaime I de Aragón. (1976). Anubar Ediciones ISBN 84-7013-077-3 (3 volumes)
- Villacañas, José Luis: Jaume I el conquistador. Espasa-Calpe. Madrid. 2003. ISBN 978-84-670-1053-4
External links
