Christian king. He favoured the embassy in every way, and when the body of Santa Justa could not be found, helped the envoys who were also aided by a vision seen by one of them in a dream, to discover the body of Saint Isidore, which was reverently carried away to Leon. Ferdinand died on the feast of Saint John the Evangelist, the 24th of June 1065, in Leon, with many manifestations of ardent piety—having laid aside his crown and royal mantle, dressed in the frock of a monk and lying on a bier, covered with ashes, which was placed before the altar of the church of Saint Isidore.
FERDINAND II., king of Leon only (d. 1188), was the son
of Alphonso VII. and of Berenguela, of the house of the counts
of Barcelona. On the division of the kingdoms which had
obeyed his father, he received Leon. His reign of thirty years
was one of strife marked by no signal success or reverse. He
had to contend with his unruly nobles, several of whom he put
to death. During the minority of his nephew Alphonso VIII. of
Castile he endeavoured to impose himself on the kingdom as
regent. On the west he was in more or less constant strife with
Portugal, which was in process of becoming an independent
kingdom. His relations to the Portuguese house must have
suffered by his repudiation of his wife Urraca, daughter of
Alphonso I. of Portugal. Though he took the king of Portugal
prisoner in 1180, he made no political use of his success. He
extended his dominions southward in Estremadura at the expense
of the Moors. Ferdinand, who died in 1188, left the
reputation of a good knight and hard fighter, but did not display
political or organizing faculty.
FERDINAND III., El Santo or “the Saint,” king of Castile
(1199–1252), son of Alphonso IX. of Leon, and of Berengaria,
daughter of Alphonso VIII. of Castile, ranks among the greatest
of the Spanish kings. The marriage of his parents, who were
second cousins, was dissolved as unlawful by the pope, but the
legitimacy of the children was recognized. Till 1217 he lived
with his father in Leon. In that year the young king of Castile,
Henry, was killed by accident. Berengaria sent for her son
with such speed that her messenger reached Leon before the news
of the death of the king of Castile, and when he came to her she
renounced the crown in his favour. Alphonso of Leon considered
himself tricked, and the young king had to begin his reign by a
war against his father and a faction of the Castilian nobles.
His own ability and the remarkable capacity of his mother
proved too much for the king of Leon and his Castilian allies.
Ferdinand, who showed himself docile to the influence of Berengaria,
so long as she lived, married the wife she found for him,
Beatrice, daughter of the emperor Philip (of Hohenstaufen), and
followed her advice both in prosecuting the war against the Moors
and in the steps which she took to secure his peaceful succession
to Leon on the death of his father in 1231. After the union of
Castile and Leon in that year he began the series of campaigns
which ended by reducing the Mahommedan dominions in Spain
to Granada. Cordova fell in 1236, and Seville in 1248. The
king of Granada did homage to Ferdinand, and undertook to
attend the cortes when summoned. The king was a severe
persecutor of the Albigenses, and his formal canonization was
due as much to his orthodoxy as to his crusading by Pope
Clement X. in 1671. He revived the university first founded
by his grandfather Alphonso VIII., and placed it at Salamanca.
By his second marriage with Joan (d. 1279), daughter of Simon,
of Dammartin, count of Ponthieu, by right of his wife Marie,
Ferdinand was the father of Eleanor, the wife of Edward I. of
England.
FERDINAND IV., El Emplazado or “the Summoned,” king of Castile (d. 1312), son of Sancho El Bravo, and his wife
Maria de Molina, is a figure of small note in Spanish history.
His strange title is given him in the chronicles on the strength
of a story that he put two brothers of the name of Carvajal to
death tyrannically, and was given a time, a plazo, by them in
which to answer for his crime in the next world. But the tale
is not contemporary, and is an obvious copy of the story told
of Jacques de Molay, grand-master of the Temple, and Philippe
Le Bel. Ferdinand IV. succeeded to the throne when a boy of
six. His minority was a time of anarchy. He owed his escape
from the violence of competitors and nobles, partly to the tact
and undaunted bravery of his mother Maria de Molina, and
partly to the loyalty of the citizens of Avila, who gave him
refuge within their walls. As a king he proved ungrateful to his
mother, and weak as a ruler. He died suddenly in his tent at
Jaen when preparing for a raid into the Moorish territory of
Granada, on the 7th of September 1312.
FERDINAND I., king of Aragon (1373–1416), called “of
Antequera,” was the son of John I. of Castile by his wife Eleanor,
daughter of the third marriage of Peter IV. of Aragon. His
surname “of Antequera” was given him because he was besieging
that town, then in the hands of the Moors, when he was told
that the cortes of Aragon had elected him king in succession to his
uncle Martin, the last male of the old line of Wilfred the Hairy.
As infante of Castile Ferdinand had played an honourable part.
When his brother Henry III. died at Toledo, in 1406, the cortes
was sitting, and the nobles offered to make him king in preference
to his nephew John. Ferdinand refused to despoil his brother’s
infant son, and even if he did not act on the moral ground he
alleged, his sagacity must have shown him that he would be at
the mercy of the men who had chosen him in such circumstances.
As co-regent of the kingdom with Catherine, widow of Henry III.
and daughter of John of Gaunt by his marriage with Constance,
daughter of Peter the Cruel and Maria de Padilla, Ferdinand
proved a good ruler. He restrained the follies of his sister-in-law,
and kept the realm quiet, by firm government, and by prosecuting
the war with the Moors. As king of Aragon his short reign of
two years left him little time to make his mark. Having been
bred in Castile, where the royal authority was, at least in theory,
absolute, he showed himself impatient under the checks imposed
on him by the fueros, the chartered rights of Aragon and Catalonia.
He particularly resented the obstinacy of the Barcelonese,
who compelled the members of his household to pay municipal
taxes. His most signal act as king was to aid in closing the
Great Schism in the Church by agreeing to the deposition of the
antipope Benedict XIV., an Aragonese. He died at Ygualada
in Catalonia on the 2nd of April 1416.
FERDINAND V. of Castile and Leon, and II. of Aragon
(1452–1516), was the son of John I. of Aragon by his second
marriage with Joanna Henriquez, of the family of the hereditary
grand admirals of Castile, and was born at Sos in Aragon on the
16th of March 1452. Under the name of “the Catholic” and
as the husband of Isabella, queen of Castile, he played a great
part in Europe. His share in establishing the royal authority
in all parts of Spain, in expelling the Moors from Granada, in the
conquest of Navarre, in forwarding the voyages of Columbus,
and in contending with France for the supremacy in Italy, is
dealt with elsewhere (see Spain: History). In personal character
he had none of the attractive qualities of his wife. It may
fairly be said of him that he was purely a politician. His marriage
in 1469 to his cousin Isabella of Castile was dictated by the
desire to unite his own claims to the crown, as the head of the
younger branch of the same family, with hers, in case Henry IV.
should die childless. When the king died in 1474 he made an
ungenerous attempt to procure his own proclamation as king
without recognition of the rights of his wife. Isabella asserted
her claims firmly, and at all times insisted on a voice in the
government of Castile. But though Ferdinand had sought a
selfish political advantage at his wife’s expense, he was well aware
of her ability and high character. Their married life was dignified
and harmonious; for Ferdinand had no common vices, and
their views in government were identical. The king cared for
nothing but dominion and political power. His character
explains the most ungracious acts of his life, such as his breach
of his promises to Columbus, his distrust of Ximenez and of the
Great Captain. He had given wide privileges to Columbus on
the supposition that the discoverer would reach powerful kingdoms.
When islands inhabited by feeble savages were discovered,
Ferdinand appreciated the risk that they might become
the seat of a power too strong to be controlled, and took
measures to avert the danger. He feared that Ximinez and the
