SANCHO III OF NAVARRE

'Sancho III Garcés' (circa 985 – 18 October 1035), called 'the Great' (Spanish: ''el Mayor'' or ''el Grande''), was Count of Aragón and King of Navarre from 1000 until his death and Count of Castile ''jure uxoris'' from 1029 to his death. Between 1015 and 1019, he conquered Sobrarbe and Ribagorza.
During his lifetime, he was the most important Christian monarch of the Iberian Peninsula, bearing, in various media, the title of ''rex Hispaniarum''. Having gone further than any of his predecessors in uniting the divided kingdoms of Iberia, his life's work was undone when he divided his domains shortly before his death to provide for each of his sons.

Contents

Regency and early acquisitions

Acquisition of Castile and León

Gascon suzerainty

Title

Succession

Legacy

Notes

Sources

Regency and early acquisitions

Sancho was born around 985 (some sources give 970 or even 992 or later) to García IV the Tremulous and Jimena Fernández, daughter of the count of Cea on the Galician frontier. He was raised in Leyra. He became king between 1000 and 1004, inheriting the kingdom of Pamplona (or Navarre, as it was variously called) and the county of Aragon. He was initially under a council of regency led by the bishops and his mother.
In 1015, he displaced Muslim control in the depopulated former county of Sobrarbe, and profited from the internal difficulties in Ribagorza to annex that county between 1016 and 1019, eventually marrying the heiress. He also forced Berengar Raymond I of Barcelona to become his vassal, though he was already a vassal of the French king. Berengar met Sancho in Zaragoza and in Navarre many times to confer on a mutual policy against the counts of Toulouse.
With Alfonso V of León, he led a combined attack against al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir, better known as Almanzor, conquering further territories in the south. After the crisis in the Caliphate of Córdoba, initiated by the death of al-Mansur in the 1002 Battle of Calatañazor, Sancho aspired to unify the Christian principalities in the face of the fragmentation Muslim Spain into the taifa kingdoms.

Acquisition of Castile and León

In 1016, Sancho fixed the border between Navarre and Castile, part of the good relationship he established by marrying Muña Mayor Sánchez (Muniadona), daughter of Sancho I of Castile. In 1017, he became the protector of Castile for the young García II. However, relations between the three Christian entities of León, Castile, and Navarre soured after the assassination of Count García in 1027. He had been bethrothed to Sancha, daughter of Alfonso V, who was set thus to gain from Castile lands between the rivers Cea and Pisuerga (as the price for approving the marital pact). As García arrived in León for his wedding, he was killed by the sons of a noble he had expelled from his lands.
Sancho III had opposed the wedding — and the ensuing Leonese expansion — and received a chance to act upon García's death. As the late count's brother-in-law, he immediately occupied Castile and was soon engaged in a full-scale war with León under Alfonso's successor, Vermudo III. The combined Castilian and Navarrese armies quickly overran Vermudo's kingdom, occupying Astorga. By March 1033, he was king from Zamora to the borders of Barcelona.
In 1034, even the city of León, the ''imperiale culmen'' (imperial capital, as Sancho saw it), fell, and there Sancho had himself crowned again. This was the height of Sancho's rule which now extended from the borders of Galicia in the west to the county of Barcelona in the east.
In 1035, he refounded the diocese of Palencia, which had been laid waste by the Moors. He gave the see and its several abbacies to Bernard, of French or Navarrese origin, to whom he also gave the secular lordship (as a ''feudum''), which included many castles in the region.
Taking residence in Nájera instead of the traditional capital of Pamplona, as his realm grew larger, he considered himself a European monarch, establishing relations on the other side of the Pyrenees. He was assassinated at Bureba on 18 October 1035 and was buried in the monastery of San Salvador of Oña, an enclave in Burgos, under the inscription ''Sancius, gratia Dei, Hispaniarum rex''.

Gascon suzerainty

Sancho established relations with the Duchy of Gascony, probably of a suzerain-vassal nature, him being the suzerain.^[1] In consequence of his relationship with the monastery of Cluny, he improved the road from Gascony to León. This road would begin to bring increased traffic down to Iberia as pilgrims flocked to Santiago de Compostela. Because of this, Sancho ranks as one of the first great patrons of the Saint James Way.
Sancho VI of Gascony was a relative of Sancho of Navarre and he spent a portion of his life at the royal court in Pamplona. He also partook alongside Sancho the Great in the Reconquista. In 1010, the two Sanchos appeared together with Robert II of France and William V of Aquitaine, neither of whom was the Gascon duke's suzerain, at Saint-Jean d'Angély. After Sancho VI's death (1032), Sancho the Great extended his authority definitively into Gascony, where he began to mention his authority as extending as far as the Garonne in the documents issued by his chancery.
In southern Gascony, Sancho created a series of viscounties: Labourd (between 1021 and 1023), Bayonne (1025), and Baztán (also 1025).

Title

Throughout his long reign, Sancho used a myriad of titles. After his coronation in León, he styled himself ''rex Dei gratia Hispaniarum'', or "by the grace of God, king of the Spains," and minted coins with the legend ''Imperator totius Hispaniae''. The use of the first title implied his kingship over all the independently founded Iberian kingdoms and the use of the form ''Dei gratia'', adopted from French practice, stressed that his right to rule was of divine origin and sustenance. The latter, imperial title was only rarely employed, for it is not documented, being found only on coins only probably datable to his reign. It is not unlikely, however, that he desired to usurp the imperial title which the kings of León had thitherto carried.^[2]
Despite this, the contemporary ecclesiastic Abbot Oliva only ever acknowledged Sancho as ''rex Ibericus'' or ''rex Navarrae Hispaniarum'', while he called both Alfonso V and Vermudo III emperor. The first title considers Sancho as king of all Iberia, as does the second, though it stresses his kingship over Navarre alone as if it had been extended to authority over the whole Christian portion of the peninsula.
To the Moors, he was always only ''Baskunish'', the "lord of the Basques."

Succession

Besides four legitimate sons by Mayor, Sancho also fathered one by his mistress Sancha de Aybar named Ramiro, who was the eldest of his sons but, as a bastard, not entitled to succeed. Before his death in 1035, Sancho divided his possessions among his sons. García received Navarre and the Basque country with a certain seniority over his brothers (a "high kingship"), Ferdinand received Castile as a kingdom, and Gonzalo got Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, also raised to kingdom status. The illegitimate son obtained the county of Aragón, which was elevated to a kingdom, small as it was at the time (Ramiro was known as "the petty king"). Sancho left a younger son who did not partake in the inheritance, Bernard. He left two daughters, Mayor and Jimena, who married Vermudo III.

Legacy

He introduced French feudal theories and ecclesiastic and intellectual currents into Iberia, such as the Cluniac Reform. He also began the Navarrese series of currency by minting what the Encyclopaedia Britannica calls "deniers of Carolingian influence." The division of his realm upon his death, the concepts of vassalage and suzerainty, and the use of the phrase "by the grace of God" (''Dei gratia'') after his title were imported from France, with which he tried to maintain relations. For this he has been called the "first Europeaniser of Iberia."^[2]
His most obvious legacy, however, was the temporary union of all Christian Iberia. At least nominally, he ruled over León, the ancient capital of the kingdom won from the Moors in the eighth century, and Barcelona, the greatest of the Catalan cities. Though he divided the realm at his death, thus created the enduring legacy of Castilian and Aragonese kingdoms, he left all his lands in the hands of one dynasty, the Jiménez, which kept the kingdoms allied by blood until the twelfth century. He made the Navarrese pocket kingdom strong, politically stable, and independent, preserving it for the remainder of the Middle Ages. It is for this that his seal has been appropriated by Basque nationalism. Though, by dividing the realm, he isolated the kingdom and inhibited its ability to gain land at the expense of the Moslems. Summed up, his reign defined the political geography of Iberia until its union under the Catholic Monarchs.

Notes

1. Collins.
2. Menéndez Pidal.
3. Menéndez Pidal.

Sources

★ Collins, Roger. ''The Basques''. Blackwell Publishing: London, 1990.

★ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. ''La España del Cid''. 1929.

★ Map of the division of Sancho's realm.