FERDINAND III, the Saint, King of Castile and León. - B. in 1199, son of Alfonso IX of León and of Berenguela of Castile, king of Castile from 1217 and of León from 1330, d. at Seville on 30 May 1252. His military successes reduced the Arab dominion in Spain to the Kingdom of Granada. F. extended the frontiers of Castile toward the south from the Sierra Morena as far as the sea, along the line Murcia-Cartagena to the east and Huelva-Cádiz to the west. The most important conquest was Seville (1248), its resistance having been overcome by the war fleet under the command of the first admiral of Castile, Bonifaz.
In the matter of international politics F. was the first to glimpse the geopolitical complement of Spain in Morocco, whose conquest he was preparing when he died; he wished to annex Navarre to Castile and claimed for his first wife, Beatrice, the duchy of Swabia. Internally, the most important facts of his policy are the definitive union of the Kingdoms of León and Castile, the centralization of the administration, the design of making a code for an entire kingdom, carried out on his commission by his son Alfonso X the Wise, and his having made Castilian the official language. He proved tolerant toward the Jews and the subjected Arabs, granting them, as at Murcia in 1243, a partial autonomy. To heretics he had the laws of his time applied. He favored the reestablishment of the dioceses of Baeza, later transferred to Jaén, Cordova, Cartagena, Murcia, Seville; he endowed churches; he protected the religious Orders, especially the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The Roman Curia supported F. in the struggle for the possession of Castile and of León and against the Arabs. With him begins the "right of patronage." F. favored the Universities of Palencia, Salamanca and the Studium generale of Valladolid; he began the cathedrals of Burgos (1221-22) and Toledo (1227). He was profoundly religious, he had a special devotion to Our Lady. Canonized by Clement X on 4 Feb. 1671.
The Friars Minor count him among the tertiaries.
Bibliography4 works
Giovanni Mesequer