and then supported their new lord in a war of survival
with his sibling (1296–1298) that guaranteed at least
temporarily Sicilian independence.
The combination of specifi cally applied force and
wide-ranging diplomatic activity marked all of Jaime’s
subsequent forays into foreign affairs. Maintaining
generally peaceful relations with Castile, he used the
death of his cousin, Sancho IV of Castile (1284–1296)
to block the accession of the young heir, Fernando IV
(1296–1312), in favor of another contender for the
Castilian crown, hoping to gain the pivotal district of
Murcia in the process. Though this conspiracy proved
unsuccessful, Jaime persistently pressed his claim to
Murcia. By 1304, the Castilians relented partially and
granted Jaime the right to conquer Almería and its
surroundings. Since the region was still under Muslim
control, an Aragónese attack of the city brought over-
whelming response from the Granada emir, Muh.ammad
III (1302–1309) and this effectively ended Aragónese
military operations in Andalusia until the era of the
Catholic kings.
Despite these aftershocks of the great Reconquest,
events soon convinced Jaime that much greater geo-
political prizes awaited him in the Mediterranean than
on the Iberian Peninsula. When the Sicilian war ended
in 1302, mercenary forces (almogávares) who had
served Fadrique were out of a job. Accepting an offer
for employment from the Byzantine emperor Michael
IX (1295–1320), the company was soon thrown out
of work again by a premature peace with the Ottoman
Turks and then went into business for itself by ravaging
much of the central Mediterranean and establishing a
loose colonial structure, the Duchy of Athens, which
remained in Catalan hands until 1388. Indirectly thrust
into Mediterranean affairs by this “Catalan Vengeance,”
Jaime bided time until 1322 when he attempted to make
good his claim to Sardinia with extensive military opera-
tions that, however, never brought the island under his
control and ultimately consumed the very Barcelona
dynasty itself when in 1410 the last heir to the dynasty
died putting down yet another Sardinian uprising. De-
spite this lingering Sardinian debacle, Jaime’s reign had
ushered in a new economic era in the Mediterranean that
made the Catalans, with bases in Athens, Sardinia, the
North African litoral, and the Balearics, a strong rival
to Pisa and Genoa for market dominance.
Jaime also played a signifi cant role in domestic
affairs. Trained in Sicilian politics, which gave much
greater power to the sovereign, Jaime brought to east-
ern Spain not a revolution, but a steady manipulation
of legal and constitutional norms. Under his tutelage,
royal government became steadily more effi cient and
productive. Quickly realizing the disparate nature of
his realms, the king soon moved to set up structures
that fi rmly tied the ruling center to its many peripher-
ies. His most far-reaching action in this regard was the
Privilege of Union (1319), which affi rmed “whoever was
the king of Aragón would also be the king of Valencia
and the count of Barcelona.” To further this unity, Jaime
completely reformed royal government, dividing it into
such departments as the chancellery and the treasury,
and staffi ng these with university educated specialists
such as the chancellor, treasurer, and master of accounts.
From this pool of curial talent, he chose advisers who,
along with trusted nobles and clergy, constituted the
royal council.
The wholesale administrative changes that accompa-
nied Jaime’s accession enraged his conservative realms
of Aragón and Valencia, which had spent the last three
decades in stamping out royal “innovations” and in le-
gally subordinating the crown to baronial control. Rather
than using military means to confront this insurgency
(occasionally bound together as the Unión), the king, in
August 1301, used the very laws forced on his ancestors
to charge his rebellious barons with treason and did so
before the unionist functionary, the Justicia de Aragón.
Despite this temporary triumph, Jaime knew he could
not fully defeat the barons and admitted as much in the
Declaration of the General Privilege (1325), in which
he formally accepted many of the legal restrictions the
Unión had previously imposed on the crown.
Jaime II died on 2 November 1327. He married four
times: to Isabel of Castile (1291), Blanche of Anjou
(1295), Maria de Lusignan (1317), and Elisenda de
Montcada (1322). The most fecund of these unions was
the second, which produced ten children, including the
princes Jaime, Alfonso (the eventual successor), and
Juan (late archbishop of Tarragona). To later histori-
ans, Jaime was known as “the Just” or “the Justiciar”
because he would allow no one but himself to “render
verdicts for disputes.” Despite these judicial sobriquets,
his greatest accomplishment was the transformation of
the Crown of Aragón from a solely Iberian to a strong
Mediterranean power.See also Pedro III, King of Aragón;
Sancho IV, King of CastileFurther Reading
Abulafi a D., A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan Kingdom
of Majorca. Cambridge, 1994.
Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Cancillería real, Regs. 90–350;
Pergaminos, Carp. 128–214.
Kagay D. J. “Rebellion on Trial: The Aragónese Union and Its
Uneasy Connection to Royal Law, 1265–1301,” Journal of
Legal History 18, no. 3(1997): 30–43.
Martínez Ferrando, J. E. “Jaime II,” in Els Descendants de Pere
el Gran. Barcelona, 1980.
Salavert, V. Cerdena y la expansion mediterránea de la Corona
de Aragón, 1297–1314. Madrid, 1956.
Donald J. KagayJAIME II