James I the Conqueror

French-born king of Spain (r. 1217-1276)

• Born: February 2, 1208
• Birthplace: Montpellier, County of Toulouse (now in France)
• Died: July 27, 1276
• Place of death: Valencia (now in Spain)

James conquered three Islamic principalities in Spain and reorganized his many realms in Mediterranean Spain and Occitania (now southern France) into a great and prosperous state, rivaling Genoa for control of western Mediterranean naval power and trade. An autobiographer, he also founded a university and promulgated the first Romanized law code of general application in Europe.

Early Life

James I the Conqueror was born in the port city of Montpellier, whose sovereign lordship was held by his mother, Marie of Montpellier. His father was Peter II the Catholic, victor at Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) over the Islamic Almohad empire when James was a child. Because of his incompetence in war, Peter lost the Battle of Muret (1213) to the French Crusaders against the Albigensians and, with it, his life and his dynasty’s control over much of what is now southern France.

The crusade’s leader, Simon de Montfort, kidnapped the child James, planning eventually to marry him to his own daughter. James’s mother, Marie, went to Rome, persuaded Pope Innocent III to rescue her son and protect his kingdom during the child’s minority, and then died (1213). Thus James was an orphan, sometimes poor and hungry, at the castle of Monzón, headquarters of the Knights Templars, who coruled his rebellious kingdom for him under papal orders.

In 1217, James began his personal rule. Although he was to call himself “king from the Rhone River to Valencia,” his main realms were the inland kingdom of Aragon and the coastal county of Catalonia. Aragon was a feudal, stock-raising land; Catalonia was a far wealthier and more powerful urban region. Each had its own language, law, government, economy, and culture. James himself spoke mainly Catalan, and doubtless some Aragonese and the Occitan of his trans-Pyrenean holdings. Still a teenager, James was knighted and, to help stabilize his restless realms, married in 1221 to an older woman, Princess Leonor of Castile. The unhappy union was annulled in 1229, after the birth of a son, Alfonso.

In his prime, James was an imposing figure, taller than his contemporaries, of athletic build, with blond hair and handsome countenance. His portrait at about age fifty was to show an alert majestic personage, with a small beard and the longish hair of his generation. His character was bold, impulsive, generous, and courteously chivalric. He was also cruel on occasion, as when he had the tongue of the bishop of Gerona cut out in 1246.

James was also notorious in Christendom as a womanizer. He dearly loved his second wife, Princess Yolande of Hungary (1235), who gave him two daughters and two sons. At her death, he married and soon repudiated his third wife, Teresa Gil de Vidaure (1255), after having two more sons. James also had at least five illegitimate children.

Life’s Work

James spent much of his life conquering the Islamic regions to his south, already weakened by the breakup of the Almohad empire after his father’s victory at Las Navas de Tolosa. In 1229, James gathered a large fleet and army for an amphibious assault on the emirates of the Balearic Islands. Majorca Island fell in 1229, Minorca became a tributary in 1232, and Ibiza fell in 1235. Long after young James’s abortive invasion of the Islamic province, or principality, of Valencia in 1225, his raiding knights in 1232 began the long war of conquest there. James kept it going until 1245, in constant maneuvering and bypassing, with few pitched battles but with major sieges of Burriana (1233), the city of Valencia (1238), and Biar (1245). The Siege of Játiva was rather a series of feints and interim arrangements from 1239 to 1252.

Meanwhile, the Franks of Francia, in the wake of the Albigensian crusade, were absorbing ever more of Occitania; James counteracted the French moves ineffectively. In 1245, he patched up a final truce in southern Valencia with the local leader, declared his Valencian crusade finished, and plunged into Occitan affairs. He also projected in 1246 an ambitious crusade to support Latin Byzantium against Greek reconquest. As a result of all these programs abroad, the Valencian Muslims were able to revolt successfully from 1247 into 1258, to James’s anger and frustration.

In 1258, James gave up all but a coastal stretch of Occitania to Louis IX of France by the Treaty of Corbeil. He continued to organize his Majorcan and Valencian conquests, each as a “kingdom” with a multiethnic population of Muslims, Christians, and Jews as parallel, semiautonomous communities. In 1261, he called the first corts (parliament) of Valencia, which promulgated the final version of his pioneering Roman law code, the furs (laws). When a countercrusade drove his Castilian neighbors out of the kingdom of Murcia to the south of Valencia, James reconquered that region for the Castilians. In 1269, he mounted a crusade to the Holy Land, although contrary winds and domestic worries aborted his personal role in that adventure. James had been in contact with the Mongols in 1267, exchanging diplomatic-military missions with an eye to allying with this new menace so as to reconquer Jerusalem.

During all this time, and fitted in between his crusading conquests in Spain, James led an energetic life on many other fronts. Besides his constant concern with Occitania, which involved him in the intrigues and battles of the English (from their bases in English Aquitaine) and of principalities such as Toulouse and Marseilles, he was also involved intimately with Castile, at times lending support against the Muslims there and at times angrily on the very edge of war with its people. As the French grew stronger in Occitania, James turned to their rivals the Hohenstaufens of Sicily and Germany, marrying his son Peter to the Hohenstaufen heiress and surely already envisioning the Catalan seizure of Sicily by Peter in 1282. In between conquests and international projects, James also had to fight sporadic baronial rebellions, as well as two serious revolts by his sons.

James’s greatest international triumph occurred in 1274, when he briefly became the adviser on crusade matters at the Second Council of Lyon in France. He devotes twenty chapters of his autobiography to that culminating point in his career. James died as he had lived, a conquering warrior. In the last year of his long life, the Muslims of Valencia again revolted, supported by invading armies from Granada and North Africa. James fought desperately to stem their reconquest of Valencia; when death claimed him in the process (1276), his son Peter had to bury him temporarily in Valencia and continue to subdue the Muslims. Later, James was interred in a splendid tomb at Poblet Monastery, near Tarragona.

More than a warrior and statesman, James conspicuously advanced the laws, institutions, and commerce of his realms. The corts of his several principalities matured under him, both in their regional and general forms. By exploiting the cheap paper available to him after his conquest of that Islamic industry at Játiva in Valencia, he built the first extensive archives of any European secular state. He multiplied a hierarchy of functionaries in a sophisticated administrative bureaucracy and tirelessly traveled his realms every year in person. James was a leader in the renaissance of Roman law in his century; besides the Valencian Furs (1261), he promulgated the Aragonese Fueros (1247), the Costums of Lérida (1228), and the Costums de la Mar (1258) that evolved into the famed Consulate of the Sea. His reorganization of communal government, especially at Barcelona and in the towns of Valencia and Majorca, lent stability to his municipalities.

Commerce and naval power expanded marvelously under James’s direction; they may have been a major purpose of his conquests. He took over the “circle trade” between North Africa, Valencia, Majorca, and parts of southern France. His merchants became the major European presence in Tunis (effectively a client state of James) and in Alexandria, Egypt.

As part of this affluence, James encouraged Jewish immigration; despite some aggressive proselytism, as in the disputation of Barcelona (1263), his reign is remembered as a political golden age and cultural renaissance for his Jewish communities in Spain and southern France. James presided over and contributed personally to the flowering of the Catalan language and literature. The work of historians Ramón Muntaner and Bernat Desclot, the prolific philosopher-mystic Raymond Lull, the troubadour Cerverí de Girona and especially the king’s autobiography, Libre dels feyts (thirteenth century; The Chronicle of James I, King of Aragon, Surnamed the Conqueror, 1883) exemplify this major moment in the Romance languages. Also, James did not neglect higher education; he founded a university at Valencia in the wake of his conquest, and he intruded so forcefully with statutes and reorganization at the University of Montpellier that he is remembered as a kind of second founder there. In addition, his reign saw a renewed enthusiasm for building sweep over the land, from Lérida to Valencia.

Significance

James I the Conqueror is universally recognized as the founder of the greatness of the realms of Aragon and as one of the handful of main leaders of the Spanish Reconquest. He and his older contemporary Ferdinand III of Castile virtually brought that movement to its dramatic close. Because James’s realms joined with Castile some two hundred years later to start the beginning of the country now called Spain, he is therefore a great figure for Spain as well. The Catalans particularly honor him as their own greatest ruler, administrator, and military figure, and as the main promoter of their rise to commercial, imperial, and cultural greatness.

His life from helpless child-hostage and ward of the Knights Templars in a poor and unstable kingdom to eventual eminence as the most successful Crusader of Christendom and head of a major world power makes a colorful and stirring tale. Despite his solid achievements in administration, law, commerce, culture, and international affairs, James preferred to see himself in the role of chivalric knight and warrior-conqueror. His autobiography leaves out almost every other aspect of his career, concentrating, as its title says, on his deeds of war. His book’s structure owes much to the Islamic ruler-(auto)biography genre, and its tone echoes the troubadour poems it often incorporates in prose form. Yet, with its naïve self-reflection and vigorous spirit, it reveals much of the private James as well, providing a rare, personal view of a remarkable medieval king.

Kings of Aragon

Reign

• Ruler

1035-1063

• Ramiro I

1063-1094

• Sancho Ramirez

1094-1104

• Pedro I

1104-1134

• Alfonso I (co-ruled León and Castile, 1109-1126)

1134-1137

• Ramiro II

1137

• Union with County of Barcelona

1137-1162

• Petronilla

1162-1196

• Alfonso II

1196-1213

• Pedro II

1213-1276

• James I the Conqueror (under regency to 1217)

1276-1285

• Pedro III

1285-1291

• Alfonso III

1291-1327

• James II

1327-1336

• Alfonso IV

1336-1387

• Peter IV

1387-1395

• John I

1395-1410

• Martin I

1412-1416

• Ferdinand I

1416-1458

• Alfonso V

1458-1479

• John II

1479-1516

• Ferdinand II

Bibliography

Bisson, Thomas N. The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Chapter 3 provides a compendious summation of James’s reign, and a fine general history of the region is covered in other chapters. Especially good on the reign’s constitutional and fiscal aspects, with a long section on the king’s early years and another on conquests and foreign relations.

Burns, Robert I. The Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Reconstruction on a Thirteenth-Century Frontier. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967. Covers the conquest and, particularly, James’s use of Church institutions as his main resource for consolidating his hold and restructuring the conquered kingdom’s elements. With chapters on James’s school system, hospitals, appointed bishops, military orders, economic foundations, and more. Includes a bibliography.

Burns, Robert I. Islam Under the Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Valencia. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973. Describes the collapse of the Almohads and Islamic Valencia, James’s crusade and its extension in the form of Muslim revolts, and especially the role and transformation of Valencia’s postcrusade Muslims. Covers James’s surrender concessions and treaties thoroughly, his incorporation of the military elites into his feudal system, and the subject communities’ law, worship, economic life, local dynasties, and organization. Includes illustrations, maps, and a bibliography.

Burns, Robert I. Medieval Colonialism: Postcrusade Exploitation of Islamic Valencia. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975. Studies James’s handling of Valencia’s conquered Muslims, drawing social history especially from the taxes he imposed. Covers public monopolies, agrarian and commercial taxes, irrigation and similar fees, the shops and taverns, military obligations, and the means of harvesting these taxes. Includes a bibliography, maps, and illustrations.

Burns, Robert I. Moors and Crusaders in Mediterranean Spain: Collected Studies. London: Variorum, 1978. Sixteen selected articles on James. Chapter 1 is a psychohistorical analysis of his personality and behavior. Other chapters discuss the Muslims taken into his feudal ranks, proselytism and converts, the anti-Moor riots of 1276, James’s importation of more Muslims for economic reasons, his modes of inviting surrender and making peace, and more.

Burns, Robert I. Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Discusses prominent themes in James’s realms: the language barrier, redrawing the maps of the conquered kingdom, the role of his corsairs and of pirates, the king’s Jews, the surrender constitutions, the proselytizing movement, the revolt of al-Azraq, and James’s continuing role in southern France, especially his personal raid to kidnap the heiress of Provence in Marseilles. Includes a bibliography and maps.

Burns, Robert I. Society and Documentation in Crusader Valencia. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985. Examines in detail the archival registers of James in thirty-eight specialized chapters. Describes his traveling court and household and his chancery. Six chapters cover the Paper Revolution, by which cheap paper from conquered Játiva transformed and bureaucratized James’s administration. Other chapters discuss Valencia’s many languages, the notarial profession, the archives, and the themes most prominent in James’s records.

Burns, Robert I., ed. The Worlds of Alfonso the Learned and James the Conqueror: Intellect and Force in the Middle Ages. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985. From a symposium comparing and contrasting the neighboring kings. Reviews James’s accomplishments, with a five-page dateline for both Spain and Europe in synchrony with the lives of James and Alfonso. Analyzes kingship and constitution under James, Catalan literature in his day, his town militia, and his policy in southern France.

Burns, Robert I., and Paul E. Chevedden. “A Unique Bilingual Surrender Treaty from Muslim-Crusader Spain.” Historian: A Journal of History 62, no. 3 (Spring, 2000). Discusses the vast number of truces, pacts, and alliances that helped define Muslim-Christian relationships at the time of the Crusades. This article looks at an often-ignored bilingual treaty specifically.

Hillgarth, Jocelyn N. The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250-1516. 2 vols. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1976-1978. Includes an excellent assessment of James and his achievements and failures. By a specialist, this work is especially good on the chronicle sources and on the economy. The volume offers generous background for all elements of Castilian and Aragonese history from about 1250.

James I the Conqueror. The Chronicle of James I, King of Aragon, Surnamed the Conqueror. Translated by John Forster. 1883. Reprint. Farnborough, England: Gregg International, 1968. The king’s own Llibre dels feyts, or book of deeds, the main source for his personality and military achievements. Literary battles have established its authenticity and primary authorship, have clarified the inclusion of prosified poems, and have suggested plausible stages and circumstances of its redaction.

Van Landingham, Marta. Transforming the State: King, Court, and Political Culture in the Realms of Aragon, 1213-1387. Boston: Brill, 2002. A study of the political, legal, and regnal culture of medieval Aragon in the time of James. Includes a bibliography and index.