♂Fernando of Castile

Fernando of Castile (August 1201 – 30 May 1252) was King of Castile and Leon, remembered as Fernando III “el Santo”, the Saint, a king whose title grew to take in Galicia, Toledo, Córdoba, Jaén and Seville. He was the twenty-third great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Eleanor of Castile (died 1290).

King of Castile

Fernando was the son of Alfonso IX, King of Leon^W, and Berenguela of Castile^W. He is said to have been born on the road between Salamanca and Zamora in August 1201, on the 5th or the 19th of the month. In 1217 his mother gave up the crown of Castile, and Fernando was proclaimed king in her place; a charter he and his brother Alfonso granted that year was made with her consent.

Two marriages

At Burgos on 30 November 1220 Fernando married Beatriz of Swabia, a daughter of Philipp, Duke of Swabia and King of the Romans. They had seven sons, among them Fernando’s successor, Alfonso X, and three daughters. Beatriz died at Toro on 5 November 1235.

Fernando and Jeanne de Dammartin married at Burgos before 31 October 1237, under a papal dispensation^W dated 31 August 1237, because they were related in the third and fourth degrees of kindred. They had four sons, Fernando, Luis, Simón and Juan, and one daughter, Eleanor, who married Edward, the heir to the English throne, in 1254.

Death and sainthood

Fernando died at Seville on 30 May 1252 and was buried in the cathedral of Santa María there^W. More than four hundred years later, in 1671, Pope Clement X canonized him as a saint.

Notes

Sources

Fernando’s parentage, birth, accession, both marriages, his children, death, burial and canonization are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. I, CASTILE 4–5, pp. 493–496; his full royal title is from ENGLAND 4–5 in the same volume. This is a printed genealogy of the medieval royal families, which cites the charters, the papal registers and the chronicles. The charter of 1217, granted with the consent of his mother, Queen Berenguela, is cited there from the cartulary of the abbeys of Tulle and Rocamadour. Eleanor’s marriage is from ENGLAND 5, p. 49.

His birth

Richardson gives the day as “5/19 Aug. 1201”, leaving the choice between the two dates open.

His name

He is better known in English as Ferdinand III of Castile. This page names him Fernando of Castile, and his second wife Jeanne de Dammartin (Juana in Spanish).