Peter III of Aragon

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For other people of the same name, see Peter of Aragon.
Peter III of Aragon
King of Aragon, Valencia
Count of Barcelona
Reign27 July 1276 – 11 November 1285
CoronationZaragoza, November 1276
(King of Aragon)
Palermo, 9 November 1282
(King of Sicily)
PredecessorJames I
SuccessorAlfonso III
King of Sicily
Reign30 August 1282 – 11 November 1285
PredecessorCharles of Anjou
SuccessorJames II
Born7 August 1240
Valencia, Aragon
Died11 November 1285 (aged 45)
Vilafranca del Penedès, Aragon
Burial
Monastery of Santes Creus
SpouseConstance II of Sicily
IssueSee "Issue"
HouseHouse of Aragon-Barcelona[1][2]
FatherJames I of Aragon
MotherViolant of Hungary

Peter III of Aragon (Valencia, 7 August 1240 – Vilafranca del Penedès, 11 November 1285),[3] called the Great, was the son of James I the Conqueror and his second wife Violant of Hungary.[4] He succeeded his father in 1276 in the titles of King of Aragon, King of Valencia and Count of Barcelona. In addition, he also became King of Sicily.

Biography

Married on 13 June 1262 in the cathedral of Montpellier to Constance of Hohenstaufen,[4] daughter and heiress of Manfred I of Sicily, they were crowned in Zaragoza, probably on 17 November 1276,[5] in a ceremony in which Peter canceled the vassalage that his grandfather Peter II had arranged with the papacy.

His entire reign was focused on the expansion of the Crown of Aragon across the Mediterranean, and to that end he took advantage of his marriage to Constance to claim the Sicilian crown. Since 1266 Sicily had been under the sovereignty of Charles of Anjou who, with the support of Pope Clement IV, who did not want any Hohenstaufen in southern Italy, had been invested as king after defeating Manfred at Benevento, where Manfred died in the battle.

The Angevin Monarch had Manfred's three sons blinded and, in 1268, captured and had beheaded Conradin who, as grandson of Frederick II, was the last male heir of the House of Hohenstaufen. The line of succession then passed to Constance, who offered refuge in Aragon to the families that had supported her father, the Lanza, the Lauria and the Procida. From there, John of Procida, Roger of Lauria and the rest of the former Hohenstaufen party organized the opposition to Charles of Anjou with Peter as their candidate, with Byzantine support.

Peter III of Aragon, depicted in the Genealogy of the House of Aragon drawn up by order of King Martin I of Aragon.

In 1279 a fleet of the Aragonese Crown, under the command of Conrado Lanza, sailed along the African coasts to restore the feudal sovereignty of Aragon over Tunis, which the death of the emir Muhammad I al-Mustansir had weakened. Later, in 1281, Peter III fitted out a fleet to invade Tunis and asked the newly elected Pope Martin IV for a bull declaring the military operation a crusade, but the Pope, of French origin and a supporter of Charles of Anjou, refused it.

When the fleet was preparing to set sail, the events known as the Sicilian Vespers took place in Sicily, which led to the expulsion of the French from the island after a great massacre. The Sicilians then sent an embassy to Peter III offering him the Sicilian crown, to which he was entitled by virtue of his marriage. The Aragonese King then set his fleet on course for Sicily, where he arrived on 30 August 1282 and was crowned King in the city of Palermo.

He immediately sent an embassy to Charles of Anjou, who was in Messina, urging him to recognize him as King of Sicily and to leave the island. The defeat of the Angevin fleet in the Gulf of Nicotera at the hands of Admiral Pere de Queralt forced Charles to leave Messina and take refuge in his kingdom of Naples.

Pope Martin IV responded to Peter III's Sicilian coronation with his excommunication (9 November 1282) and his deposition as King of Aragon (21 December 1283), offering the crown to the second son of the King of France, Charles of Valois, whom he invested on 27 February 1284, and declaring a crusade against Aragon, between 1284 and 1286, for his intervention in Sicilian affairs against the papal will. Most of the conflict took place in Catalan lands, although the first episodes occurred on the Navarrese-Aragonese border. In response, the Aragonese attacked the French in Majorca and Occitania.

The situation in which Peter III found himself was completely unstable, since he not only had to face the French invasion being prepared north of the Pyrenees, but also had to deal with serious problems within his kingdoms arising from the financial needs caused by the conquest of Sicily.

Peter III the Great at the Collado de las Panizas, by Mariano Barbasán. 1891. (Provincial Council of Zaragoza).

Peter III resolved the internal problems by granting, at the Cortes of Tarazona (1283–84), the formation of the Aragonese Union and swearing an oath to the General Privilege, which defended the privileges of the nobility; likewise, he granted the County of Barcelona the constitution "Una vegada l´any" at the Cortes held in Barcelona between 1283 and 1284.

With the internal problems resolved, he was able to focus his attention on the French invasion, which, under the command of the French King Philip III himself, took the city of Girona in 1285, only to have to withdraw immediately when the Aragonese fleet returned from Sicily under the command of Roger of Lauria and inflicted a total defeat on the French squadron at the Formigues Islands, followed by a defeat on land at the ravine of Las Panizas, as the French troops were withdrawing.

After his great victory, Peter III prepared to confront his brother James II of Majorca and his nephew King Sancho IV of Castile, who had not supported him during his conflict with the French, but his premature death prevented it. At the end of October 1285, the King fell ill when he was about to set out for Barcelona and had to stop in the town of San Climent, where the physicians, who traveled from the capital to attend him, could do nothing to save him. He died on 11 November 1285, on the feast of Saint Martin.[3] Forensic studies of his remains, exhumed in 2010, indicate that his death was probably due to a pulmonary condition.

Relationship with James I

Peter was the legitimate son with whom the King had the most dealings, although these were not always cordial owing to certain actions that came to arouse suspicion on the part of the Monarch. According to Ernest Belenguer, the relationship began to suffer in 1262, when the infante opposed the divisions of the kingdoms, under which he would inherit only the core of the Crown of Aragon, leaving to the Infante James the kingdoms of Valencia and the Balearics as well as Roussillon, Cerdanya and the Lordship of Montpellier. But it would not be until 1264, with the Aragonese intervention in support of Castile against the Mudéjar rebellion in the area, that the rivalry between father and son became manifest; even so, at the end of King James I's life, his last decisions were aimed at facilitating the Infante Peter's assumption of power, so it seems that the relationship between the two must have improved.[6]

The first time James I mentions his son in the documents is on 26 March 1251, when he granted the then eleven-year-old infante the County of Barcelona, while the King was attending the Cortes there; this act has been considered a presentation of the infante in the Catalan sphere with a propagandistic tinge, surely so that he would be seen as an alternative to the still firstborn Infante Alfonso. Over the years this link with the Catalan lands would continue to be shown, since he would appear in his diplomas as heredi Catalonie, although this would change in 1262 when the King made a new will in August and named him heir of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia.[6]

Burial

In his will, Peter III ordered that his body be buried in the Monastery of Santes Creus, of the Cistercian order. The monarch's funeral rites were celebrated with great solemnity and the king's body was placed in an urn of red porphyry, which Admiral Roger of Lauria brought from Sicily. He was the first Aragonese monarch to be buried in the Monastery of Santes Creus.

King James II of Aragon ordered the construction of the tomb of King Peter III the Great, his father, at the same time as he arranged for the creation of his own tomb and that of his second wife, Blanche of Naples. It was ordered that the sepulchers be sheltered, as was done, under baldachins carved in white marble from the quarries of San Felíu, near Girona. When King James II arranged for the creation of his own sepulcher, he took his father's sepulcher as the model.

The sepulcher of King Peter III was made between 1291 and 1307 by Bartomeu de Gerona and is richer than that of his son James II and his wife. A large shrine of openwork tracery houses the king's sepulcher, with the urn surrounded by images of saints.

The epitaph of King Peter III, placed opposite the mausoleum, on the pillar that separates the presbytery from the side chapel of the transept, bears the following inscription:

PETRUS QUEM PETRA TEGIT GENTES ET REGNA SUBEGIT,

FORTES CONFREGITQUE CREPIT, CUNCTA PEREGIT,
AUDAX MAGNANIMUS SIBI MILES QUISQUI FIT UNUS,
QUI BELLO PRIMUS INHERET JACET HIC MODO IMUS,
CONSTANS PROPOSITO VERAX SERMONE FIDELIS,
REBUS PROMISSIS FUIT HIC ET STRENUUS ARMIS,
FORTIS JUSTITIA VIVENS AEQUALIS AD OMNES,
ISTIS LAUDATUR VI MENTIS LAUS SUPERATUR,
CHRISTUS ADORATUR DUM PENITET UNDE BEATUR,
REX ARAGONENSIS COMES ET DUX BARCINONENSIS,
DEFECIT MEMBRIS UNDENA NOCTE NOVEMBRIS,
ANNO MILLENO CENTUM BIS ET OCTUAGENO,

QUINTO, SISTE PIA SIBI TUTRIX VIRGO MARIA.

In December 1835, during the First Carlist War, government troops made up of the French Foreign Legion (coming from Algeria) and several companies of miquelets were quartered in the monastery building, causing extensive damage to it. The royal tombs of James II and his wife were desecrated. The remains of James II, son of Peter III, were burned, although it seems that some remains stayed in the sepulcher. The mummy of Queen Blanche of Naples was thrown into a well, from which it was retrieved in 1854. In the case of the sepulcher of Peter III, the solidity of the porphyry urn used to house the royal remains prevented them from suffering the same fate.

Remains of Peter III of Aragon in the 21st century

In 2009 the king's mortal remains were found in his tomb at Santes Creus.[7] By means of a sophisticated endoscopy technique and an analysis of the gases contained inside, it has been possible to verify that it is the only tomb of a Monarch of the Crown of Aragon that has never been desecrated.[8]

Issue

From his marriage to Constance in 1262 four sons and two daughters were born:

With his first documented mistress, named Juana, he had two natural children, born before his marriage to Constance:[9]

He had two natural sons from his relationship with María Nicolau, before marrying Constance:[11]

  • Jaime Pérez de Aragón (d. 22 May 1285). First Lord of Segorbe, whom his father named admiral in 1280.[11] Married to Sancha Fernández, daughter of Fernando Díaz or Rodrigo Díaz, Lord of Benaguasil, and of his wife Alda Fernández de Arenós, Lady of the Vall de Lullén, by whom he had Constanza Pérez de Aragón, who was 2nd Lady of Segorbe, married to Artal Ferrench de Luna, 8th Lord of Luna;
  • Juan Pérez de Aragón;[12]

From the relationship he maintained around 1275–1280 with Inés Zapata, to whom he granted the towns of Liria and Alcira in the Kingdom of Valencia, four illegitimate children were born:[10]

  • Fernando de Aragón.[10] A Hospitaller knight, his father gave him the Lordship of Albarracín[10] in 1284 after besieging and taking the city in September of that year, defeating Juan Núñez I de Lara. In 1305 he was sent by his brother Frederick II to occupy Rhodes and other Greek islands, an expedition that failed.
  • Sancho de Aragón. Castellan of Amposta.[10]
  • Pedro de Aragón,[10] later Pedro de Aragão, went to the Kingdom of Portugal in 1297 in the company of his half-sister Isabel of Aragon and used the surname of Aragon and the arms of the King his father. A hidalgo knight in Portugal. His sister, Queen Isabel, left him 1,000 pounds in her will executed in 1314. He married in Portugal[10] Constança Mendes da Silva, second daughter of Soeiro Mendes "Petite" da Silva and of his first wife Maria Anes Brochado, by whom he had a son.[13]
  • Beatriz Pérez (d. Portugal, 1316); that she was Inés's daughter is recorded in a document mentioning Beatricem, filia dicti domini regis Peri e Agnetis Çapate.[14] She married Ramón de Cardona, with whom she accompanied her half-sister Isabel of Aragon when the latter married King Denis of Portugal. They were the parents of five children: Guillermo, Ramón, Isabel, Beatriz and Leonor.[15] She was buried in the monastery of Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Velha in Coimbra.

By María Pérez de Logroño he had:

  • Sancho de Aragón (March/May 1284 – 1335). He was recognized as a son on 15 December 1292. He pursued his cursus honorum in Sicily, where he had his possessions, in the service of King Frederick III, and before 1326 he married Macalda, daughter of Vinciguerra Palizzi, by whom he had two sons, Federico and Giovanni, who founded a cadet branch.[16]

Ancestors

Ancestors of Peter III of Aragon

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Jocelyn Hillgarth (1976). The Spanish Kingdoms (1250-1516). Oxford University Press. p. 286. ISBN 019822530x. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  2. ↑ 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. p. 123. ISBN 2-503-50600-3. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Cabrera Sánchez 2011, pp. 112–113.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Hinojosa Montalvo, José. "Pedro III de Aragón". Real Academia de la Historia (in español). Madrid. Retrieved 1 August 2023.
  5. ↑ In the registers of the Royal Chancery the annotation Hic Rex (Here the king) appears on that date, whereas until then he had always appeared as infante. See Ferran Soldevila, Jaume I, Pere el Gran, Ed. Vicens-Vives, 4th ed., Barcelona, 1995, p. 90.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Lajusticia Rodríguez, Lajusticia Rodríguez, Francisco Saulo (2019). La relación de Jaime I de Aragón con sus hijos en los registros de cancillería (1257-1276) (PDF) (in español). Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico. pp. 32–37. ISBN 9788499115405.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. ↑ Hallada la momia del monarca Pere el Gran (in Spanish)
  8. ↑ "La tumba de Pere II 'El Gran' permanece intacta desde la Edad Media" (in español). Archived from the original on 29 November 2009. Retrieved 26 November 2009.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Cingolani 2022, p. 271.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 Hinojosa Montalvo, José. Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes (ed.). "Los reinos cristianos medievales. Pedro III el Grande (1240-1285)". Portal La Monarquía Hispánica (in español). Retrieved 1 June 2019.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Cingolani 2022, p. 272.
  12. ↑ Ferrer i Mallol 1998, p. 1434.
  13. ↑ Costa Felgueiras Gaio 1938, pp. 52, Tomo Terceiro, tt.º Aragoins, § 2.
  14. ↑ Cingolani 2022, pp. 271–272.
  15. ↑ Ferrer i Mallol 1998, pp. 1434–1435.
  16. ↑ Cingolani 2022, pp. 273–374.

Bibliography

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