Saint Ferdinand III Round Religious Medal

Saint Ferdinand III (July 30 or August 5, 1199 May 30, 1252), was the King of Castile from 1217 and King of Len from 1230. Through his second marriage he was also Count of Aumale. He finished the work done by his maternal grandfather Alfonso VIII and consolidated the Reconquista. In 1231, he permanently united Castile and Len. He was canonized in 1671. Early in his reign, Ferdinand had to deal with a rebellion of the House of Lara. He also established a permanent border with the Kingdom of Aragon by the Treaty of Almizra (1244). St Ferdinand spent much of his reign fighting the Moors. Through diplomacy and war, exploiting the internal dissensions in the Moorish kingdoms, he triumphed in expanding Castilian power over southern Iberian Peninsula. He captured the towns of beda in 1233, Crdoba in 1236, Jan in 1246, and Seville in 1248, and occupied Murcia in 1243, thereby reconquering all Andalusia save Granada, whose king nevertheless did homage to Ferdinand. Ferdinand divided the conquered territories between the Knights, the Church, and the nobility, whom he endowed with great latifundias. When he took Crdoba, 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 Crdoba was the result of an uneven and uncoordinated process whereby parts (the Ajarqua) of the city first fell to the independent almogavars of the Sierra Morena to the north, which Ferdinand had not at the time subjugated. Only in 1236 did Ferdinand arrive with a royal army to take Medina, the religious and administrative centre of the city. 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 the Church. On 10 March 1241, Ferdinand established seven outposts to define the boundary of the province of Crdoba. On the domestic front, he strengthened the University of Salamanca and founded the current Cathedral of Burgos. He was a patron of the newest movement in the Church: that of the friars. Whereas the Benedictines and then the Cistercians and Cluniacs had taken a major part in the Reconquista up til then, Ferdinand founded Dominican, Franciscan, Trinitarian, and Mercedarian houses in Andalusia, thus determining the religious future of that region. Ferdinand has also been credited with sustaining the convivencia in Andalusia. The Primera Crnica General de Espaa asserts that, on his death bed, Ferdinand commended his son "you are rich in lands and in many good vassals more so than any other king in Christendom," probably in recognition of his expansive conquests.[4] He was buried within the Cathedral of Seville by his son Alfonso X. His tomb is inscribed with four languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and an early incarnation of Castilian. St Ferdinand was canonized by Pope Clement X in 1671. Several places named San Fernando were founded across the Spanish Empire. The symbol of his power as a king was his sword Lobera.

Catalog ID: PG70990

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