Ferdinand III of Castile

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"Saint Ferdinand" redirects here. For the municipality, see Saint-Ferdinand, Quebec.
Ferdinand III
Fernando III de Castilla 02.jpg
Ferdinand III in a 13th-century miniature
King of Castile and Toledo
Reign 1217–1252
Predecessor Berengaria
Successor Alfonso X
King of León and Galicia
Reign 1230–1252
Predecessor Alfonso IX
Successor Alfonso X
Consort Elisabeth of Hohenstaufen
Joan, Countess of Ponthieu
among others...
Alfonso X of Castile
Berengaria, Abbess of Las Huelgas
Philip, Archbishop of Seville
Sancho, Archbishop of Seville
Manuel of Castile
Eleanora, Queen of England
House House of Burgundy
Father Alfonso IX of León
Mother Berengaria of Castile
Born (1199-08-05)5 August 1199
Monastery of Valparaíso, Peleas de Arriba, Kingdom of Castile
Died 30 May 1252(1252-05-30) (aged 52)
Seville, Crown of Castile
Burial Seville Cathedral, Seville, Spain
Religion Roman Catholicism
Saint Ferdinand, T.O.S.F.
Fernando III el Santo, rey de Castilla y León.jpg
Honored in
Roman Catholic Church
(Third Order of St. Francis)
Canonized 1671, Rome, Papal States by Pope Clement X
Major shrine Seville Cathedral;
Feast 30 May
Patronage University of Salamanca; Cathedral of Burgos; Cathedral of Sevilla; of friars: (Dominican, Franciscan, Trinitarian, and Mercedarian);Lucena City, Quezon; San Fernando, California; City of San Fernando, Pampanga; Metropolitan Cathedral of San Fernando; (Cathedral of Resistencia, Argentina);San Fernando de Dilao Church (Pro-Cathedral of San Fernando de Dilao, Paco, Manila)

Ferdinand III, T.O.S.F., (5 August 1199 – 30 May 1252) was the King of Castile from 1217 and King of León from 1230 as well as King of Galicia from 1231.[1] He was the son of Alfonso IX of León and Berenguela of Castile. Through his second marriage he was also Count of Aumale. Ferdinand III was one of the most successful kings of Castile, securing not only the permanent union of the crowns of Castile and León, but also masterminding the most expansive campaign of Reconquista yet.

By military and diplomatic efforts, Ferdinand greatly expanded the dominions of Castile into southern Spain, annexing many of the great old cities of al-Andalus, including the old Andalusian capitals of Córdoba and Seville, and establishing the boundaries of the Castilian state for the next two centuries.

Ferdinand was canonized in 1671 by Pope Clement X and, in Spanish, he is known as Fernando el Santo, San Fernando or San Fernando Rey. Places such as San Fernando, La Union, San Fernando, Pampanga, and the San Fernando de Dilao Church in Paco, Manila in the Philippines, and in California, San Fernando City and the San Fernando Valley, were named for him and placed under his patronage.

Early life[edit]

Ferdinand was born at the Monastery of Valparaíso (Peleas de Arriba, in what is now the Province of Zamora) in 1198 or 1199. As the son of Alfonso IX of Leon and Berengaria of Castile, Ferdinand is descendent of Alfonso VII of Leon and Castile on both sides of his parents as his paternal grandfather Ferdinand II of Leon and maternal great grandfather Sancho III of Castile were the sons and successors of Alfonso VII, Ferdinand is also on his maternal side a great grandson of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

The marriage of Ferdinand's parents was annulled by order of Pope Innocent III in 1204, due to consanguinity. Berenguela then took their children, including Ferdinand, to the court of her father, King Alfonso VIII of Castile. In 1217, her younger brother, Henry I, died and she succeeded him to the Castilian throne, but she immediately surrendered it to her son, Ferdinand, for whom she initially acted as regent.

Unification of Castile-León[edit]

United arms of Castile and León which Ferdinand first used.

When Ferdinand's father, Alfonso IX of León, died in 1230, his will delivered the kingdom to his older daughters Sancha and Dulce, from his first marriage to Teresa of Portugal. But Ferdinand contested the will, and claimed the inheritance for himself. At length, an agreement was reached, negotiated primarily between their mothers, Berengaria and Teresa, and signed at Benavente on 11 December 1230, by which Ferdinand would receive the Kingdom of León, in return for a substantial compensation in cash and lands for his half-sisters, Sancha and Dulce. Ferdinand thus became the first sovereign of both kingdoms since the death of Alfonso VII in 1157.

Early in his reign, Ferdinand had to deal with a rebellion of the House of Lara.

Conquest of al-Andalus[edit]

Since the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 halted the advance of the Almohads in Spain, a series of truces had kept Castile and the Almohad dominions of al-Andalus more-or-less at peace. However, a crisis of succession in the Almohad Caliphate after the death of Yusuf II in 1224 opened to Ferdinand III an opportunity for intervention. The Andalusian-based claimant, Abdallah al-Adil, began to ship the bulk of Almohad arms and men across the straits to Morocco to contest the succeession with his rival there, leaving al-Andalus relatively undefended. Al-Adil's rebellious cousin, Abdallah al-Bayyasi (the Baezan), appealed to Ferdinand III for military assistance against the usurper. In 1225, a Castilian army accompanied al-Bayyasi in a campaign, ravaging the regions of Jaén, vega de Granada and, before the end of the year, had successfully installed al-Bayyasi in Córdoba. In payment, al-Bayyasi gave Ferdinand the strategic frontier strongholds of Baños de la Encina, Salvatierra (the old Order of Calatrava fortress near Ciudad Real) and Capilla (the last of which had to be taken by siege). When al-Bayyasi was rejected and killed by a popular uprising in Cordoba shortly after, the Castilians remained in occupation of al-Bayyasi's holdings in Andújar, Baeza and Martos.

The crisis in the Almohad Caliphate, however, remained unresolved. In 1228, a new Almohad pretender, Abd al-Ala Idris I 'al-Ma'mun', decided to abandon Spain, and left with the last remnant of the Almohad forces for Morocco. Al-Andalus was left fragmented in the hands of local strongmen, only loosely led by Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Hud al-Judhami. Seeing the opportunity, the Christian kings of the north - Ferdinand III of Castile, Alfonso IX of León, James I of Aragon and Sancho II of Portugal - immediately launched a series of raids on al-Andalus, renewed almost every year. There were no great battle encounters - Ibn Hud's makeshift Andalusian army was destroyed early on, while attempting to stop the Leonese at Alange in 1230. The Christian armies romped through the south virtually unopposed in the field. Individual Andalusian cities were left to resist or negotiate their capitulation by themselves, with little or no prospect of rescue from Morocco or anywhere else.

The twenty years from 1228 to 1248 saw the most massive advance in the Roman Catholic reconquista yet. In this great sweep, most of the great old citadels of al-Andalus fell one by one. Ferdinand III took the lion's share of the spoils - Badajoz and Mérida (which had fallen to the Leonese), were promptly inherited by Ferdinand in 1230; then by his own effort, Cazorla in 1231, Úbeda in 1233, the old Umayyad capital of Córdoba in 1236, Niebla and Huelva in 1238, Écija and Lucena in 1240, Orihuela and Murcia in 1243 (by the famous 'pact of Alcaraz'), Arjona, Mula and Lorca in 1244, Cartagena in 1245, Jaén in 1246, Alicante in 1248 and finally, on 22 December 1248, Ferdinand III entered as a conqueror in Seville, the greatest of Andalusian cities. At the end of this twenty-year onslaught, only a rump Andalusian state, the Emirate of Granada, remained unconquered (and even so, Ferdinand III managed to extract a tributary arrangement from Granada in 1238).

Ferdinand annexed some of his conquests directly into the Crown of Castile, and others were initially received and organized as vassal states under Muslim governors (e.g. Alicante, Niebla, Murcia), although they too were eventually permanently occupied and absorbed into Castile before the end of the century (Niebla in 1262, Murcia in 1264, Alicante in 1266). Outside of these vassal states, Christian rule could be heavy-handed on the new Muslim subjects. This would eventually lead to the mudéjar uprisings of 1264-66, which resulted in mass expulsions of the Muslim populations. The range of Castilian conquests also sometimes transgressed into the spheres of interest of other conquerors. Thus, along the way, Ferdinand III took care to carefully negotiate with the other Christian kings to avoid conflict, e.g. the treaty of Almizra (26 March 1244) which delineated the Murcian boundary with James I of Aragon.

Ferdinand divided the conquered territories between the Knights, the Church, and the nobility, whom he endowed with great latifundias. When he took Córdoba, he ordered the Liber Iudiciorum to be adopted and observed by its citizens, and caused it to be rendered, albeit inaccurately, into Castilian.

The capture of Córdoba was the result of a well-planned and executed process whereby parts of the city (the Ajarquía) first fell to the independent almogavars of the Sierra Morena to the north, which Ferdinand had not at the time subjugated.[2] Only in 1236 did Ferdinand arrive with a royal army to take the Medina, the religious and administrative centre of the city.[2] Ferdinand set up a council of partidores to divide the conquests and between 1237 and 1244 a great deal of land was parcelled out to private individuals and members of the royal family as well as to the Church.[3] On 10 March 1241, Ferdinand established seven outposts to define the boundary of the province of Córdoba.

Domestic policy[edit]

On the domestic front, Ferdinand strengthened the University of Salamanca and erected the current Cathedral of Burgos. He was a patron of the newest movement in the Church, that of the mendicant Orders. Whereas the Benedictine monks, and then the Cistercians and Cluniacs, had taken a major part in the Reconquista up until then, Ferdinand founded houses for friars of the Dominican, Franciscan, Trinitarian, and Mercedarian Orders throughout Andalusia, thus determining the future religious character of that region. Ferdinand has also been credited with sustaining the convivencia in Andalusia.[4] He himself joined the Third Order of St. Francis, and is honored in that Order.


Statue of Ferdinand III (Patio of Metropolitan Cathedral of San Fernando)

Ferdinand III had started out as a contested king of Castile. By the time of his death in 1252, Ferdinand III had delivered to his son and heir, Alfonso X, a massively expanded kingdom. The boundaries of the new Castilian state established by Ferdinand III would remain nearly unchanged until the late 1400s. His biographer, Sister María del Carmen Fernández de Castro Cabeza, A.C.J., asserts that, on his death bed, Ferdinand said to his son "you will be rich in land and in many good vassals, more than any other king in Christendom."[5]

Ferdinand was buried in the Cathedral of Seville by his son, Alfonso X. His tomb is inscribed in four languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and an early version of Castilian.[6] He was canonized as St. Ferdinand by Pope Clement X in 1671.[7] Today Saint Fernando can still be seen in the Cathedral of Seville, for he rests enclosed in a marvelous gold and crystal casket worthy of the king. His golden crown still encircles his head as he reclines beneath the statue of the Virgin of the Kings.[8] Several places named San Fernando were founded across the Spanish Empire in his honor.

The symbol of his power as a king was his sword Lobera.


First marriage[edit]

In 1219, Ferdinand married Elisabeth of Hohenstaufen (1203–1235), daughter of the German king Philip of Swabia and Irene Angelina. Elisabeth was called Beatriz in Spain. Their children were:

  1. Alfonso X, his successor
  2. Frederick
  3. Ferdinand (1225–1243/1248)
  4. Eleanor (born 1227), died young
  5. Berengaria (1228–1288/89), a nun at Las Huelgas
  6. Henry
  7. Philip (1231–1274). He was promised to the Church, but was so taken by the beauty of Christina of Norway, daughter of Haakon IV of Norway, who had been intended as a bride for one of his brothers, that he abandoned his holy vows and married her. She died in 1262, childless.
  8. Sancho, Archbishop of Toledo and Seville (1233–1261)
  9. Manuel of Castile
  10. Maria, died an infant in November 1235

Second marriage[edit]

After he was widowed, he married Joan, Countess of Ponthieu, before August 1237. They had four sons and one daughter:

  1. Ferdinand (1239–1260), Count of Aumale
  2. Eleanor (c.1241–1290), married Edward I of England. They had sixteen children including the future Edward II of England and every English monarch after Edward I is a descendant of Ferdinand III.
  3. Louis (1243–1269)
  4. Simon (1244), died young and buried in a monastery in Toledo
  5. John (1245), died young and buried at the cathedral in Córdoba



  1. ^ Janna Bianchini (2012), The Queen's Hand: Power and Authority in the Reign of Berenguela of Castile, University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN 9780812206265 
  2. ^ a b Edwards, 6.
  3. ^ Edwards, 7.
  4. ^ Edwards, 182.
  5. ^ Fernández de Castro Cabeza, María del Carmen, A.C.J., Sister (1987). The Life of the Very Noble King of Castile and León, Saint Ferdinand III. Mount Kisco, N.Y.: The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc. p. 277. 
  6. ^ Menocal, 47.
  7. ^ Bernard F. Reilly, The Medieval Spains, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 133.
  8. ^ Fitzhenry, 6.


External links[edit]

Ferdinand III of Castile
Born: 5 August 1199 Died: 30 May 1252
Regnal titles
Preceded by
King of Castile and Toledo
Succeeded by
Alfonso X
Preceded by
Alfonso IX
King of León and Galicia
Preceded by
Abdul-Wahid II
King of Córdoba
Preceded by
Abu Bakr Muhammad
King of Murcia
Preceded by
Muhammad al-Nasrid
King of Jaén
Preceded by
King of Seville
Preceded by
Count of Aumale
with Joan
Succeeded by
as sole ruler
Preceded by
Count of Ponthieu
with Joan