Crown of Aragon

Who rules

Name

Peter II 'the Catholic' (Pedro II; Pere I in Catalan numbering)

Title

King of Aragon, Count of Barcelona, lord of Roussillon and Cerdanya, overlord of the Crown's vassals north of the Pyrenees

Since

25 April 1196, when his father Alfonso II died at Perpignan

Born

At Huesca, most likely in July 1178 (Spanish Wikipedia, following Alvira Cabrer). The Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana gives 1177; English Wikipedia's page on his mother gives 1174/76. He is about 21 on 1 January 1200.

Family

House of Barcelona. Son of Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castile, daughter of Alfonso VII. First cousin of Alfonso VIII of Castile, whose father Sancho III was Sancha's half-brother. Nephew of Archbishop Berenguer of Narbonne (campaign notes).

Confidence

high

He began his reign under his mother's tutelage (Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana gives no end date; Miret i Sans thought her influence lasted at least into his first years). By 1198 he governs in his own name. He is unmarried. A plan to marry a Navarrese princess, named by the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana as Constance, so as to inherit Navarre, failed when the pope refused a dispensation for kinship; its date is not pinned. He was raised at Huesca by his nurse Sancha de Torres.

Overlord

None in temporal matters. In 1204 he will make his kingdom a fief of the papacy; not yet.

What the realm holds

• The Kingdom of Aragon: royal towns and castles held through tenants (see the lords and towns in this file)
• Catalonia: the counties of Barcelona, Girona, Osona, Besalú and the rest held directly, with the counts of Urgell, Pallars and Empúries and the great barons as vassals (see the Catalonia records)
• Roussillon (inherited by Alfonso II in 1172) and Cerdanya with Conflent, held directly
• Overlordship of the viscounts of Béarn, who have done homage to the kings of Aragon since 1170; Gaston VI also holds Bigorre by his marriage to Petronilla (1196)
• Overlordship of the Trencavel lands (Carcassonne, Razès), whose viscount Raymond-Roger was born in 1185 and is still young (degree of control not pinned)
• Alliance or homage from Foix and Comminges: Comminges becomes Peter's vassal for the Val d'Aran only in 1201; formal homage from Foix is recorded in 1208 and 1213
• The future conquest zone of Valencia, reserved to Aragon by the treaty of Cazola (1179)

How it was acquired

Inherited on 25 April 1196 under Alfonso II's will, which gave Aragon and Catalonia with Roussillon and Cerdanya to Peter and Provence to his brother Alfonso.

Allies and rivals

Allies: Alfonso VIII of Castile (cousin, ally since the León war of 1196-1197 and the Calatayud treaty of 1198); Raymond VI of Toulouse, the old enemy of the house of Barcelona, now drawn in (he was at Peter's court at Perpignan in February 1198, and the marriage of Peter's sister Eleanor is agreed during 1200); the counts of Foix and Comminges; Genoa. Rivals: Sancho VII of Navarre; Almohad Valencia and the Banu Ghaniya of Majorca by sea; his own mother over her dower; Catalan barons such as Guerau IV de Cabrera, who submitted in June 1199.

The realm that morning

Peter rules in his own name with a small, stable court of Aragonese barons (Castellazol, Luesia, Ladrón, Cornel, Romeu, Alagón, Sesé, Alcalá) and Catalan magnates. The quarrel with his mother is open. The Navarre war of 1198 has given Aragon no conquest that the sources read here can name. The southern frontier is active: Mora is held by Pedro Ladrón, lord of Teruel, and Manzanera, Rubielos, Ademuz and Castielfabib are still Muslim.

Wealth

Royal rents and tolls on the Ebro and the Jaca road; the tribute and booty of the frontier; the jaquesa coinage; the Catalan ports and the trade of Barcelona; rights in Occitania. The king borrows heavily: at Fraga on 20 June 1199 he acknowledged a debt to Galiana, widow of B. de Bergadà, and he pays in grants of rents and castles.

Military

The host of Aragon is the ricos hombres with the knights they keep from their honores, the alférez commanding the king's own knights; the councils of the Extremadura (Calatayud, Daroca, Teruel) with their caballeros villanos, who serve in the host or ride their own raids; the military orders (the Temple at Monzón, Alfambra and Castellote; the Hospital at Amposta and Caspe; Calatrava at Alcañiz); and the Catalan barons and towns. Aragonese and Navarrese knights both serve the king (Pedro Ladrón, Jimeno de Rada). No numbers are given by the sources read.

Threats

• The quarrel with his mother over her dower and her safety, which involves Castile as mediator
• Almohad Valencia: raids on Teruel's villages and on the new post of Mora
• Navarre: a returning Sancho VII could strike the Cinco Villas, Borja and Tarazona
• Money: debts, debased coin and pledged rights
• Catalan baronial wars (Cabrera; Foix and Castellbò against Urgell), see Catalonia
• Heresy in the lands of his Occitan vassals and allies, and the papal legates who pursue it
• Sea raids from the Banu Ghaniya of Majorca

Court in 1200

The court is in the high Pyrenean valleys at the turn of the year. Peter II was at Luesia on 18 December 1199 and spent Christmas at Luesia and Jaca; on 30 December 1199 he issued a charter at Jaca with his mayordomo and alférez present. In January 1200 he is at Huesca, in February at Zaragoza and Calatayud. So on the morning of 1 January 1200 the king is almost certainly at Jaca.

Consort

None. Peter is unmarried on 1 January 1200. He marries Marie of Montpellier on 15 June 1204.

Heirs

No legitimate child. The heir presumptive is his brother Alfonso, count of Provence (born 1180). Natural children later named by the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana: Constance, who married the seneschal Guillem Ramon de Montcada, and Pere, canon and sacristan of Lleida; their birth dates are not pinned and they may not yet be born.

Kin in 1200

• Mother: Queen Sancha of Castile (born 21 September 1154 or 1155, about 45). Founder (the usual date is 1188) of the Hospitaller convent of Sigena in the Monegros, where she lives as a sister of the Hospital with her own household; her mayordomo in December 1198 was Lope de Valtierra. She holds dower lands and rights in Aragon and Catalonia: in April 1198 at Tarragona she gave up her rights over the cathedral's property at Montroig in return for Montroig itself, the church taking Albiol and Riba, and she granted the castle of 'Alarán' (as printed) to Bernat de Portella. The full list of her dower lands is not pinned. On 1 January 1200 she and her son are at odds over her safety and her property; the quarrel is settled in September 1200 at Ariza, at a meeting held before Alfonso VIII of Castile.
• Sister Constance (born 1179, about 20): queen of Hungary, wife of King Emeric. Widowed in 1204, she later marries Frederick II.
• Brother Alfonso (born 1180, about 19): count of Provence since 1196 as Alfonso II of Provence (English Wikipedia also gives him Millau and Razès). He holds Provence as a separate share of the family's lands, not as Peter's vassal in the strict sense. Dies in February 1209.
• Sister Eleanor (born 1182, about 17): unmarried. Her marriage to Count Raymond VI of Toulouse is agreed during 1200 (Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana); Spanish Wikipedia puts the wedding in 1202.
• Sister Sancha (born 1186, about 13): unmarried. She will marry Raymond VII of Toulouse in 1211.
• Brother Ferdinand (born 1190, about 9): destined for the Church; later a Cistercian monk and abbot of Montearagón.
• Sister Dulce (born 1192, about 7): with her mother at Sigena, later a nun there.
• Brother Ramon Berenguer (born about 1183/85): died young.
• Uncle Sancho (died 1223), son of Ramon Berenguer IV: count of Cerdanya about 1175-1188 and of Provence 1181-1185, until Alfonso II removed him. On 1 January 1200 he holds no county that the sources show, though he still styles himself count of Provence. Married to Sancha Núñez de Lara (1185); their son is Nuño Sánchez. Peter gives him Roussillon only in 1208.
• Uncle Berenguer, archbishop of Narbonne, a bastard of Ramon Berenguer IV (campaign notes).

Officers in 1200

• Mayordomo (maiordomus) of the king: Guillem de Castellazol (Guillermo de Castillazuelo), attested from September 1196 to the Jaca charter of 30 December 1199; also senior in Huesca in October 1198. See Castellazol.
• Alférez (standard-bearer, who leads the king's knights in the field): Miguel de Luesia, attested December 1198 and 30 December 1199. His predecessor in 1196-1197 was Pedro Ladrón. See Luesia (Miguel).
• Mayordomo of the queen mother: Lope de Valtierra (December 1198).
• Seneschal of Barcelona: hereditary in the Montcada. Who exercised it on 1 January 1200 is not pinned in the sources read here; the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana calls Guillem Ramon de Montcada, the killer of Archbishop Berenguer de Vilademuls in 1194, 'the seneschal' when he married the king's natural daughter. See the Catalonia records.
• Majordomo of Catalonia, chancellor and Justicia of Aragon: not pinned for 1 January 1200. Charters of 1198-1199 were written by the notaries Bonet (Tarragona), Pere de Blanes (Fraga) and a scribe Guillem (Barcelona).

Treaties in 1200

• Cazola, 20 March 1179, between Alfonso II and Alfonso VIII: Valencia, with Xàtiva, Biar and Dénia, is reserved for Aragon's conquest and Murcia for Castile's. It replaced the division of Tudillén (1151), under which Aragon was to hold Murcia of Castile.
• Calatayud, May 1198: treaty of friendship between Peter II and Alfonso VIII, aimed at Navarre (Alvira Cabrer's edition, doc. 154, cited by Garcia Edo).
• Genoa, 3 September 1198: treaty of peace and mutual help with the commune of Genoa (Miret i Sans), made amid Saracen raids on the Provençal coast at Toulon and Hyères.
• Navarre: Spanish Wikipedia records a truce between Alfonso VIII and Sancho VII made in March 1197 at a meeting on the boundary between Ágreda and Tarazona, brokered by the king of Aragon (it names Alfonso II, but he was dead, so it must be Peter). It did not last. Aragon and Castile then invaded Navarre while Sancho VII was away in Africa (about 1198-1200). Any peace between Peter and Sancho on 1 January 1200 is not pinned.

Relations

Castile

Close alliance with his cousin Alfonso VIII: at his mother's urging Peter helped him against León in 1196-1197, ravaging the land between the Duero and Astorga, and joined him in forcing León to terms (GEC). The May 1198 treaty of Calatayud binds them against Navarre. Alfonso VIII will preside over the settlement between Peter and his mother at Ariza in September 1200.

Navarre

Hostile. Sancho VII is away in Almohad lands and Castile is besieging Vitoria; Aragon is Castile's partner against him. A Navarrese marriage that would have made Peter Sancho's heir was blocked by the pope (date not pinned). Peace terms before 1200 are not pinned. The Navarrese and Aragonese lines touch at Sos, Uncastillo, Ejea, Tauste, Mallén and Tarazona.

Leon

Peter fought Alfonso IX in 1196-1197 as Castile's ally; the León marriage of 1197 ended that war.

Almohads

No general truce between Aragon and the Almohads is attested in the sources read. The frontier war is local and seasonal: the councils of Teruel and Daroca raid, Mora was taken and granted out in 1198, and the Almohad garrisons of Valencia raid back. The caliph since early 1199 is Muhammad al-Nasir.

Rome

Innocent III. In 1199, by the letter usually cited as 'Quanto personam tuam', the pope answered Peter about an oath he had sworn at his accession to keep his father's coinage, which had been debased; the pope's reply allowed him to be released from an oath that harmed his people (T. N. Bisson's reading; the letter is not checked here). The new archbishop of Tarragona, Ramon de Rocabertí (1199), is Peter's metropolitan. Coronation by the pope in Rome comes only in November 1204, with the enfeoffment of the kingdom to the Holy See.

Occitania

Toulouse: rapprochement after a century of war (see allies). Montpellier: William VIII is lord under the bishop of Maguelone (campaign notes); Peter will marry his daughter Marie in 1204. Béarn and Bigorre: Gaston VI is Peter's vassal. Carcassonne and Razès: the Trencavel viscount is a young vassal. Foix and Comminges: allies. Provence: his brother. The papal legates against heresy, Rainier and Guy, are at work in these lands (campaign notes).

Coinage

Aragon uses the dinero jaqués (moneda jaquesa), named for the old royal mint at Jaca; Catalonia uses the money of Barcelona. Peter swore at his accession to keep his father's coinage, which led to the papal letter of 1199 (see Rome). Spending and poor management bring repeated debasements and changes of money in his reign (GEC). The monedaje, a tax paid in return for a promise not to change the coin, is introduced in Aragon about 1205; it does not yet exist on 1 January 1200.

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

In 1200

1. January 1200The court moves from Jaca to Huesca (Alvira Cabrer, doc. 220, cited by Garcia Edo), then in February to Zaragoza and Calatayud (docs. 226, 228).Depends on: The king's ordinary itinerary. Stopped by: War or illness.
2. During 1200 (month not pinned)The marriage of Peter's sister Eleanor to Raymond VI of Toulouse is agreed; Spanish Wikipedia puts the wedding in 1202.Depends on: The Toulouse alliance holding. Stopped by: A breach with Toulouse, or papal objection to Raymond's marriages.
3. September 1200, at ArizaConcord between Peter II and Queen Sancha: the king guarantees her safety and her own property, as agreed at a meeting held before Alfonso VIII of Castile (Alvira Cabrer, doc. 261; ACA, Pergaminos Pedro I, 121).Depends on: Alfonso VIII's mediation and Peter's need of Castile. Stopped by: Open rupture between mother and son, or a break with Castile.

Later, on the likely course

1. 1201Bernard IV of Comminges becomes Peter's vassal in exchange for the Val d'Aran; Peter grants self-government to Fraga.Depends on: Peter's Occitan policy. Stopped by: War in Occitania.
2. 1202-1204Conquest of Manzanera (1202) and Rubielos (1203 or 1204) on the Valencian frontier.Depends on: Campaigns from Teruel; no Almohad counterstroke. Stopped by: A truce or an Almohad offensive.
3. 15 June 1204; November 1204Peter marries Marie of Montpellier and gains Montpellier; he is crowned by Innocent III in Rome and makes his kingdom a papal fief.Depends on: William VIII's succession politics and Peter's need of papal backing. Stopped by: Another marriage, or a quarrel with Rome.

Places of note

• Jaca: the court on 30 December 1199: Charter granting a castle to Pedro Pomar, witnessed by the mayordomo, the alférez and the barons; the king's Christmas stay.
• Luesia: the king on 18 December 1199: Grant to the Hospital of Jerusalem, witnessed by Jimeno and Miguel de Luesia and Pedro Sesé.
• Huesca: the court in January 1200: The king's birthplace and next stop.
• Ariza: the concord of September 1200: Frontier castle facing Castile, chosen for the meeting with Alfonso VIII and the queen mother.
• Sigena: the queen mother: Hospitaller convent founded by Queen Sancha, where she lives.

Where the sources disagree

• A common account makes Peter's uncle Sancho count of Roussillon and Cerdanya. On 1 January 1200 he holds neither: Cerdanya about 1175-1188, Roussillon only from 1208 (English Wikipedia, Sancho, Count of Provence).
• Peter's birth year: July 1178 (Spanish Wikipedia), 1177 (Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana), 1174/76 (English Wikipedia, Sancha of Castile).
• The campaign notes call Berenguer of Narbonne Peter's uncle; this agrees with the sources.

Evidence: Thick for the royal family and for the officers and court of December 1199, which come from charters calendared by Miret i Sans. Fair for diplomacy (the treaties are known but the Navarre war is poorly documented in what was read). Thin for the queen mother's dower and the seneschalship.

On the map: No map parts: the realm is drawn from its lords, towns and anchors.

Primary sources for this realm

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• Annals of Toledo and other short Iberian annals (12th and 13th centuries; Anales Toledanos I to 1219). Florez's volume 23 gathers the short annals of the peninsula. Read online
• Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, Anonymous, probably Juan of Osma, chancellor of Castile (about 1223 to 1239). The chancellor's chronicle of Alfonso VIII's reign, detailed from the 1190s. Read online
• The Wondrous Account of the History of al-Andalus and the Maghreb, Ibn Idhari al-Marrakushi (about 1312, at Marrakesh). The Almohad section is the fullest year-by-year narrative of the caliphate around 1200: the last campaigns and the death of Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur in January 1199, the accession of his son Muhammad al-Nasir, the renewed war of the Banu Ghaniya in Ifriqiya under Yahya ibn Ishaq and his ally Qaraqush, the Almohad losses of Mahdia and Tunis a few years later, and al-Nasir's reconquest of Ifriqiya in 1205 to 1206 followed by the appointment of Abd al-Wahid ibn Abi Hafs as governor. Read online
• Deeds of the Counts of Barcelona, Anonymous (monks of Santa Maria de Ripoll) (first version 1162 to 1184; continued in the later 13th century; final version 1303 to 1314). The house chronicle of the counts of Barcelona.
• History of the Affairs of Spain, Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada (completed 1243). The archbishop's history of the peninsula, written forty years on by a Navarrese who served Castile. Read online
• The Book of Examples: the History of the Berbers and of the Muslim Dynasties of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun (1375 to 1379 at Qal'at Ibn Salama and Tunis, revised until 1406). Ibn Khaldun's tribal histories are the standard account of the powers that Almohad chronicles treat as background: the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym in Ifriqiya and Tripolitania and their alliances with the Banu Ghaniya and Qaraqush; the Zenata of the central Maghreb (Banu Marin, Banu Abd al-Wad, Tujin, Maghrawa) before their rise; the Sanhaja and the veiled peoples of the Sahara; the Masmuda and the Almohad tribes. Read online
• The Pleasant Book: a Summary of the History of the Maghreb, Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi (completed in 1224, in the East, after the author left the Maghreb in 1217). Abd al-Wahid was a boy of fifteen at Fez and Marrakesh in 1200 and later moved in Almohad court circles, so his account of Yaqub al-Mansur (died January 1199) and of the first years of Muhammad al-Nasir is partly from memory and from men he knew: the character of the new caliph, the weakness that let the Banu Ghaniya overrun Ifriqiya, the Majorca expedition of 1203 and the Ifriqiya campaign of 1205 to 1206. Read online
• Official Letters of the Almohad Chancery (1140s to 1260s; the letters nearest 1200 are of the reigns of al-Mansur and al-Nasir). Circular letters from the caliphs to governors, tribes and towns announcing victories, appointments and policy, preserved in later manuscript collections.
• The Book of Census of the Roman Church, Cencius Camerarius (Cencio Savelli, later Pope Honorius III) (1192, with later additions). The papal rent roll: every church, monastery, town and kingdom that owed a census to Rome in 1192, diocese by diocese, with the sums, followed by lists of papal lands and castles, the ceremonial Ordo and copies of charters. Read online
• The Registers of Pope Innocent III for 1199 to 1201, Innocent III and the papal chancery (22 February 1199 to 21 February 1201). The pope's outgoing letters for the year, in his chancery's own copy, touching nearly every realm in the atlas. Read online
• The Great Book of Fiefs, Various; compiled by Ramon de Caldes for Alfonso II of Aragon (compiled 1192 to 1194). The register of the count-king's feudal rights, finished a few years before 1200 and in use at Peter II's court: some 900 charters of homage, convention, oath, sale and marriage arranged by county and lineage, covering Catalonia, Roussillon, Cerdanya, Pallars, Urgell, the Carcassonne and Beziers lands of the Trencavels, Provence and Aragon.
• The Law Code of Cuenca, Anonymous, granted by Alfonso VIII of Castile (about 1189 to 1193). The law of a frontier town as it stood in 1200: the council and its judges, the obligations of mounted and foot townsmen for the summer raid and the king's host, the division of booty and ransoms, the treatment of Muslim captives and resident Muslims and Jews, markets, irrigation, women and inheritance, and the tariff of crimes.

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