JAIME (JAUME) I OF
ARAGÓN-CATALONIA (1208–1276)
Jaime (Jaume) I “the Conqueror,” count-king of the
realms (regnes) of Aragón-Catalonia, was the leading
fi gure of the Reconquest in eastern Spain, founder of
his realms’ greatness in the western Mediterranean, and
an innovative contributor to Europe’s administrative,
educational, legal, and literary evolution. The only son
of Pedro II (Pere I of Catalonia), “the Catholic,” he was
born in a townsman’s home at Montpellier, the principal-
ity inherited by his half-Byzantine mother, Marie. His
father, hero of the battle of Las Navas (1212), which
opened Almohad Islam to Jaime’s later conquests, died
at Muret (1213) at battle in the Albigensian crusade in
Occitania. Simon de Montfort, leader of the Albigensian
crusade, kidnapped Jaime and held him at Carcassonne.
Jaime was rescued by Pope Innocent III, who then
placed his realms under Templar protection. The orphan
Jaime—his mother had died at Rome—was brought up
from his sixth to his ninth years at the Templar head-
quarters castle of Monzón in Aragón. By the time he was
almost ten, he had begun his personal rule (1217), and
had captained armies in a league for order—the begin-
ning of his intermittent domestic wars with refractory
nobles (particularly in 1227 and 1273–1275).
In 1225 Jaime led an abortive crusade against Pe-
ñíscola in Islamic Valencia. Four years later he mounted
a successful amphibious invasion of Mallorca, adding
Minorca in 1232 and Ibiza in 1235 as tributaries. Or-
ganizing his Balearic conquests as a separate kingdom
of Mallorca, Jaime embarked on a nearly fi fteen-year
campaign to conquer Almohad Valencia piecemeal
(1232–1245). Only three major cities fell to siege
(Burriana, Valencia, Biar), with consequent expulsion
of Muslims, and Játiva succumbed to a combination of
siege, feint, and negotiated arrangements from 1239 to
1248 and on to 1252. One set-piece battle was fought
in 1237 at Puig; and Valencia surrendered in 1238.
Flanking naval power supplied Jaime’s war and fended
off Tunisian help. Alfonso X of Castile was conquering
northward out of Murcia, and the two kings narrowly
averted war over southernmost Valencia by the treaty
of Almizra in 1244.
Historians have followed Jaime’s own account in end-
ing this crusade (actually a series of papal crusades) in
1245, followed by Mudéjar revolts in the 1250s, 1260s,
and 1270s. It now seems clear that he patched up a truce
with Al-Azraq, the last leader in the fi eld, to take ad-
vantage of his last opportunity to recover Provence. He
rushed north, personally led a raid to kidnap the heiress
of Provence at Marseilles, was foiled by a counterraid
by Charles of Anjou, protested noisily to the pope,
and withdrew. Hailed as a hero of Christendom for his
conquest of Valencia at this lowest point of Europe’s
crusading movement, in 1246 Jaime rashly announced
a crusade to help Latin Byzantium. However, Al- Azraq
plunged Valencia into a decade of countercrusade
(1247–1258), put down piecemeal again by Jaime in
a new papal crusade. Jaime continually organized his
Valencian realm as his original invasion progressed,
down to his last years of life. Some of his massive land
distribution is recorded in his detailed Repartiment.
His Mudéjar treaties set up semi-autonomous Muslim
enclaves throughout Valencia, on a scale unmatched
elsewhere in Spain, forming a colonialist society with
a thin grid of Christians dominating until the following
century. He brought in more Muslims, and also attracted
Jewish settlers from Occitania and North Africa, as part
of a planned program. He set up Valencia as a separate
kingdom with its own law code, money, parliament,
and administration.
Meanwhile, Jaime signed away all but his coastal
rights in Occitania to Louis IX of France in the treaty
of Corbeil (1258). His peninsular politics, notably with
Alfonso X of Castile, are only beginning to be explored
in depth. Both kings were ambitious to absorb Navarre;
they confronted one another as champions, respectively,
of the Guelph and Ghibelline movements in the Mediter-
ranean, especially after Jaime married his heir, Pedro,
to the Hohenstaufen heiress, Constance of Sicily. In
1265–1266 Jaime helped Alfonso recover the Murcian
kingdom from Mudéjar rebellion, an adventure counted
as Jaime’s third conquest of an Islamic power. From that
time on, the confrontational character of their mutual
policies turned to friendship.
Jaime also negotiated with the Mongols, who wanted
allies against Islam, in 1267. In 1269 he fi nally mounted
his long-awaited crusade to the Holy Land, but aban-
doned his fl eet due to storms (his own excuse) or to
reluctance to leave his mistress (the charge by his en-
emies). After a brief estrangement from his heir, Pedro,
and a bitter baronial revolt led by Jaime’s bastard son
Ferran Sanxis, the conqueror had a moment of triumph
again on the world stage. Pope Gregory X summoned
him to the Second Ecumenical Council of Lyons in 1274,
particularly for his expertise in crusading; Jaime devoted
twenty chapters of his autobiography to recounting
his reception and activities there. In 1276 the worst of
Valencia’s Mudéjar revolts erupted, a sustained effort
with North African and Granadan help, to recover the
land. Jaime fell ill while fi ghting at Alcira (20 July 1276)
and died at Valencia (27 July).
He abdicated on his deathbed, to take the vows and
habit of a Cistercian monk, a not uncommon deathbed
piety then. The Mudéjar war required his burial at Va-
lencia; only in May 1278 could his successor inter him
properly at Poblet monastery near Tarragona. When
mobs sacked his tomb during the nineteenth-century
Carlist wars, his body was removed to Tarragona ca-
thedral, and only recently has been returned to Poblet.JAIME I OF ARAGÓN-CATALONIA