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Rh 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 : 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 [sic] and the