At his death the troubadour Matieu de Carsin hailed
him as exalter of the cross “beyond all kings here or
overseas,” another Arthur of Camelot. His younger con-
temporary Ramón Muntaner records that people called
him “the Good King”; another chronicler records his
title as “James the Fortunate,” founder of two thousand
churches. A myth grew that he had co-founded the Mer-
cedarian ransomer order. A later movement to canonize
him did not receive ecclesiastical encouragement.
Jaime had his dark side, however. He could be cruel
in warfare after the manner of the times. He cut out the
tongue of the bishop of Girona in 1246, for which he
suffered papal thunders and public penance. And he was
notoriously a womanizer. His guardians had married
him in 1221 to an older woman, Leónor, the sister of
Fernando III of Castile, for reasons of state. When he
was able to consummate the union, Jaime produced his
son and fi rst heir, Alfonso (who died in 1260). Rome
annulled the marriage in 1229, and in 1235 he married
the true love of his life, Violante, the daughter of King
Bela IV of Hungary, by whom he had two sons and two
daughters. She died in 1251, and in 1255 Jaime mar-
ried Teresa Gil de Vidaure, by whom he had two sons.
Historians often count Teresa as a mistress, but Pope
Gregory X regarded the marriage as fi rm in his thunders
against Jaime’s efforts to divorce her (1274) after he had
relegated her to a nunnery in Valencia. Jaime also had
seven formal or contract mistresses and at least fi ve il-
legitimate children. This led some moderns to dub him
“the Henry VIII of Spain.”
Jaime promulgated the fi rst Romanized law code
of general application, the furs of Valencia (1261), as
well as the fueros of Aragón (1247), the Lérida Costums
(1258), and the Costums de la mar (ca. 1240). Besides
founding the papal University of Valencia (1245), he
reorganized the statutes of the University of Montpel-
lier to make it the fi rst effective royal university in
Europe. He fully supported the mendicant movement
and its Arabic/Hebrew language schools, including
the Dominicans’ 1263 Disputation of Barcelona with
the Jews. By his prodigal use of Játiva paper he elabo-
rated the fi rst substantial archives in Europe after the
papacy’s, leaving a remarkable record of life and ad-
ministration in his registers. He promoted commerce
in many ways, particularly by his trade monopoly at
Alexandria, his tributary control of H.afs.id Tunis, the
North Africa– Valencia–Mallorca–Occitania trade, and
his monetary policy. He presided over a literary court
(Bernat Desclot and the troubadour Cerverí de Girona
stand out) and contributed his Llibre dels feyts, the only
autobiography by a medieval king except for his great-
great-grandson’s imitation, to European letters. Done by
collaborators at Játiva in 1244 (the fi rst three hundred
chapters) and at Barcelona in 1274, it is a lively personal
account of himself as a military Roland or Cid. Desclot
describes him as taller than most, with athletic frame
and reddish-blond hair, a man cordial to everyone and
adventurously bold. His skeletal remains confi rm the
physical details, and a portrait in Alfonso X’ s Cantigas
de Santa María shows him at around sixty, majestic,
with his short beard gone white.
See also Alfonso X, El Sabio, King of Castile and
León; Louis IXFurther Reading
Belenguer Cebrià, E. Jaume I a través de la història. 2 vols.
Valencia, 1984.
Burns, R. I. Society and Documentation in Crusader Valencia.
Princeton, N.J., 1985.
——, ed. The Worlds of Alfonso the Learned and James the
Conqueror: Intellect and Force in the Middle Ages. Princeton,
N.J., 1985.
Jaime I y su época: X Congrés d’història de la Corona d’Aragó.
5 vols. in 2. Zaragoza, 1979–82.
Tourtoulon, C. de. Études sur la maison de Barcelone: Jacme ler
le Conquérant, roi d’Aragón. 2 vols. Montpellier, 1863–67.
Rev. in trans, by Teodoro L’orente. Don Jaime I el Conquis-
tador. 2 vols. Valencia, 1874.
Robert I. Burns, S. J.JAIME II (1267–1327)
Second son of Pedro III (r. 1276–1285) and Constanza
de Hohenstaufen, Jaime II was an amalgam of the stub-
born courage of his grandfather Jaime I (1213–1276)
and a keen and crafty mind that provided a clear ruling
template for his grandson Pedro IV (1336–1387). With
his father’s acquisition of Sicily in 1283, Jaime as a teen-
ager became a pivotal fi gure in central Mediterranean
affairs, serving as king of Sicily from 1285 to 1291. In
this post, he developed a ruling style which combined
unbridled force with patient diplomacy. Holding at
bay his family’s archenemy, Charles of Anjou, by the
development of a strong fl eet, Jaime established such
an effi cient Sicihan government that, according to one
chronicler, the island population “grew prosperous in
a very short time.”
With the death of his brother, the ineffectual Alfonso
III (1285–1291), Jaime quickly realized that far greater
power was open to him on the Iberian mainland than as
Sicilian ruler. Shamefully deserting his island vassals,
the new Aragónese sovereign began transforming old
enemies into new friends. Making peace with Charles of
Anjou and sealing the new relationship by marrying his
old foe’s daughter in 1295, Jaime then rapidly mended
fences with Pope Boniface VIII (papacy 1294–1303),
becoming the standard bearer and protector of the pa-
pacy in exchange for conquest rights to Sardinia and
Corsica. The changed reality of this realpolitik was
especially dramatic in regard to Sicily, which chose
Jaime’s younger brother, Fadrique, as its sovereignJAIME II