Sancho III of Navarre
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Sancho III Garcés (c. 985 – October 18, 1035), called the Great (Spanish: el Mayor or el Grande), was Count of Aragón and King of Navarre from 1000 or 1004 until his death and Count of Castile from 1029 to his death. During his lifetime, he was the most important Christian monarch of Spain. Having gone further than any of his predecessors in uniting the divided kingdoms of Spain, his life's work was undone when he divided his domains shortly before his death to provide for each of his sons.
Reign
Sancho was born around 985 (some sources give 970 or even 992 or later) to García IV the Tremulous and Jimena Fernández, daughter of the count of Cea on the Galician frontier. He was raised in Leyra. He became king in 1000 or 1004 (he was perhaps under a regent until 1004), inheriting the kingdom of Pamplona (or Navarre, as it was variously called) and the county of Aragón. He later profited from the internal difficulties of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, and annexed those counties between 1016 and 1019 by using his rights as a descendant of Dadildis of Pallars. He also forced Berengar Raymond I, count of Barcelona, to become his vassal though he was already a vassal of the French king. Berengar met Sancho in Zaragoza and Navarre many times to confer on a mutual policy against the counts of Toulouse.With his nephew, Alfonso V of León, he led a combined attack against al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir, conquering further territories in the south. After the crisis in the Caliphate of Córdoba, initiated by the death of al-Mansur in the 1002 Battle of Calatañazor and leading to fragmented principalities, the so-called taifa kingdoms, Sancho aspired to unify the Christian principalities.
In 1017, he became the protector of Castile for the young Count García II. However, relations between the three Christian entities soured after the assassination of Count García of Castile in 1027. He had been bethrothed to Sancha of León, daughter of Alfonso V, who was set thus to gain from Castile lands between rivers Cea and Pisuerga as the price for approving the marital pact. As García arrived in León for his wedding, he was killed by the sons of a noble he had expelled from his lands.
Sancho III had opposed the wedding — and the ensuing Leonese expansion — and received a chance to act upon García's death. As the late count's brother-in-law he immediately occupied Castile and was soon engaged in a full-scale war with Leonese forces under the new King Bermudo III. The combined Castilian and Navarrese armies quickly overran Bermudo's kingdom, occupying Astorga. By March 1033, he was king from Zamora to the borders of Barcelona.
In 1034, even the city of León, the imperiale culmen (imperial capital, as Sancho saw it) itself, fell, and there Sancho had himself crowned again. This was the height of Sancho's rule which now extended from the borders of Galicia in the west to the county of Barcelona in the east and he styled himself rex Dei gratia Hispaniarum, or "By the grace of God, king of the Spains", and minted coins with the legend Imperator totius Hispaniae.
In 1035, he refounded the diocese of Palencia, which had been laid waste by the Moors. He gave the see and its several abbacies to Bernard, of French or Navarrese origin, to whom he also gave the secular lordship (as a feudum), which included many castles in the region.
Taking residence in Nájera instead of the traditional capital of Pamplona, as his realm grew larger, he considered himself a European monarch, establishing relations on the other side of the Pyrenees with the duchy of Gascony. He died on 18 October 1035 and was buried in the monastery of Oña, an enclave in Burgos, under the inscription Sancius, Gratia Dei, Hispaniarum Rex.
Succession
Sancho was married to Muña Mayor Sánchez, daughter of count Sancho I of Castile. Besides four legitimate sons he also fathered one, by his mistress Sancha de Aybar, named Ramiro, who was the eldest of his sons but, as a bastard, not entitled to succeed. Before his death in 1035, Sancho divided his possessions among his sons. García received Navarre and the Basque country with a certain seniority over his brothers (a "high kingship"), Ferdinand received Castile as a kingdom, and Gonzalo got Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, also raised to kingdom status. The illegitimate son obtained the county of Aragón, which was elevated to a kingdom, small as it was at the time (Ramiro was known as "the petty king").Legacy
He introduced French feudal theories and ecclesiastic and intellectual currents into Spain. The division of his realm upon his death, the concepts of vassalage and suzerainty, and the use of the phrase "by the grace of God" after his title were imported from France, with which he tried to maintain relations. For this he has been called the "first Europeaniser of Spain." His most obvious legacy, however, was the temporary union of all Christian Spain. At least nominally, he ruled over León, the ancient capital of the kingdom won from the Moors in the eighth century, and Barcelona, the greatest of the Catalan cities. Though he divided the realm at his death, thus created the enduring legacy of Castilian and Aragonese kingdoms, he left all his lands in the hands of one dynasty, the Jiménez, which kept the kingdoms allied by blood until the twelfth century. He made the Navarrese pocket kingdom strong, politically stable, and independent, preserving it for the remainder of the Middle Ages. Though, by dividing the realm, he isolated the kingdom and inhibited its ability to gain land at the expense of the Moslems. It is for this that his seal has been appropriated by Basque nationalism. Summed up, his reign defined the political geography of Spain until the union of the peninsula under the Catholic Monarchs.
Issue
By his mistress, Sancha de Aybar, he had one son, his eldest:
- Ramiro, king of Aragón (1035-1063)
- García, called El de Nájera, king of Navarre (1035-1054)
- Fernando, called the Great (1017-1065), king of Castile (1035-1065) and León (1037-1065)
- Gonzalo, king of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza (1035-1038)
- Bernardo
- Mayor
- Jimena, married Bermudo III of León
External links
García IV
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García V
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|width="30%" align="center" rowspan=""|Succeeded by:
Ramiro I
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|width="30%" align="center" rowspan=""|Succeeded by:
Gonzalo
as King
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|width="30%" align="center" rowspan=""|Preceded by:
García II
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Ferdinand I
as King
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