Sancho VI. (Navarre)

Sancho VI. the wise ( Basque Antso Jakituna , Spanish Sancho el Sabio ; * 1133 ; † June 27, 1194 in Pamplona ) was King of Navarre from the House of Jiménez from 1150 to 1194 . He was a son of King García IV and Marguerite de l'Aigle .

Life

Sancho's reign was marked by a constant struggle for the continued existence of his small kingdom, which in addition to the land around Pamplona also included the landscapes of Álava and Guipúzcoa , vis-à-vis its large neighbors Castile and Aragón , which Navarre intended to divide among themselves. Compared to these he had the power-political disadvantage that his reign, like his father's, was not fully recognized. As a result of the bypassing of the inheritance decree of Alfonso the Warrior of 1134, Sancho and his father were denied recognition as legitimate kings of Navarre, especially by the Holy See , and their land was effectively released for takeover. To prevent this, Sancho initially continued the political line of his father, willingly submitted to the Castilian suzerainty of the "Emperor" Alfonso VII († 1157) and married one of his daughters. He left this policy at the death of his brother-in-law Sancho III. († 1158) fall, because he recognized the chance for emancipation and expansion in the immaturity of his nephew Alfons VIII and the resulting anarchy in Castile. The aim was to recapture the Rioja landscape , which had belonged to Navarre in previous generations, but was then annexed by Castile. In the year 1162/63 he managed to take several localities such as Logroño , Navarrete , Miranda de Ebro and Briviesca .

Navarre during the reign of Sancho VII.

The expansion was accompanied by the search for a new protective power, which Sancho recognized in the rising power of the Plantagenêts north of the Pyrenees (see Angevin Empire ). In 1172 he moved to the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine in Poitiers in order to win her and her son Richard the Lionheart , who was just enthroned as Duke of Aquitaine, for an alliance. However, these efforts were thwarted by the Duchess's husband, Henry II of England , who preferred an alliance with Castile and married one of his daughters to Alfonso VIII. He came of age in 1177 and immediately took up the fight against Sancho for the disputed areas of the Rioja. In order to avoid an escalation of the war, both of them asked Henry II of England for an arbitration tribunal in March of the same year, which called on Sancho to surrender the cities he held in the Rioja to Alfonso VIII, for which he paid an annual cash payment of 3000 maravedís from the Castilian treasury. The arbitration ultimately proved unsustainable and the conflict between Navarre and Castile began to flare up again. In order to be able to defend himself against his opponent, Sancho initiated a series of infrastructural measures for his kingdom. So he founded the port of San Sebastián on the coast of Guipúzcoa in 1180 , through which Navarre should find a connection to the sea trade. To secure the province of Álava, he re- founded the old Visigoth city of Vitoria (Nueva Victoria) in 1181 and fortified it.

On October 5, 1186, Alfonso VIII of Castile and Alfonso II of Aragón allied themselves in Berdejo against Navarre and decided to divide it among themselves, similar to how it had already been divided by both powers in 1067. Against this threat, Sancho sought proximity to the Plantagenets and contacted Richard the Lionheart. He probably proposed a dynastic union for the first time on this occasion, although Richard was already engaged to a sister of King Philip II of France . In 1190 there was an unexpected change in the situation on the Iberian Peninsula, which Sancho benefited from when Alfonso VIII of Castile concluded a five-year armistice with the Almohads . Now Alfonso II of Aragón felt threatened by the growing power of Castile, terminated his alliance with it and allied himself with Sancho in Borja in September of that year . Both carried out an attack against the Castilian city of Soria in July 1191 . Already in the summer of 1190, Sancho took the opportunity to negotiate again with Richard the Lionheart, when he was staying in neighboring Bigorre shortly before the start of the third crusade , and to be able to arrange Richard's marriage to his daughter Berengaria . Apparently Richard was able to convince him of the seriousness of his promise to this marriage, although he was still engaged to the sister of the King of France. In any case, Sancho entrusted his daughter to the care of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who joined Richard, who was traveling ahead, to Sicily in late 1190 . There the couple became officially engaged to be married on May 12, 1191 in Cyprus .

The alliance with Richard the Lionheart guaranteed the survival of Navarre as an independent kingdom, as the dynastic ties to this Alfonso VIII of Castile put in his place, who had benefited no less from his alliance with the Plantagenet and who did not attack it lightly by attacking Navarre Game was ready to set. Sancho thanked his son-in-law for this with both political and military support during his absence on the crusade. So in 1192 he sent his eldest son with an army to Aquitaine in order to wrestle rebellious barons there. In spring 1194 he even presented his second son Fernando to Emperor Heinrich VI. as a hostage, as a guarantor for compliance with the terms of the contract to which Richard had committed himself as the price of his release from German captivity. Sancho died that same year; he was buried in the monastery of Santa María la Real de Nájera .

Title and coat of arms

In a document dated January 18, 1162, Sancho VI. for the last time the title “King of Pamplona” (Pampilonensium rex) traditionally used by the national kings of the Basque countries from the houses of Íñiguez and Jiménez . He replaced it in a document from October of the same year with the new title "King of Navarre" (Navarre rex) , which was then used by all subsequent kings.

Sancho VI. is the first king of Navarre who can be attributed to have a coat of arms, although the seal on which it is based (Fig. 1), which was made for a document he issued in October 1189, is a copy from the late 13th century. The seal shows him riding on horseback and carrying a Norman shield in his left hand , on which a lily reel is applied, which obviously served as a shield stiffener. The color design of the coat of arms remains unknown, although the lily reel is usually reproduced in gold on a red shield (Fig. 2) in order to place the coat of arms in continuity with the motif of the Navarra chain , which was first used in the documentary system of Sancho's grandson, Theobald I . (1234-1253) is documented.

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  Image 1

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  picture 2

progeny

Sancho VI was married. since July 20, 1153 with Sancha († August 5, 1177), a daughter of King Alfonso VII of Castile . She was buried in Pamplona Cathedral after her death. Your children were:

• Berengaria († 1230), ⚭ 1191 with King Richard I, the Lionheart of England († 1199).
• Sancho VII († April 7, 1234), King of Navarre.
• Fernando († December 16, 1207).
• Blanka († 1229), ⚭ 1199 with Count Theobald III. from Champagne († 1201).

literature

• Béatrice Leroy: Sancho VI . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 7, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7608-8907-7 , Sp. 1358.
• Juan Francisco Elizari: Sancho VI el Sabio, Rey de Navarra. Editorial Mintzoa, Iruña 1991.
• Jon Andoni Fernández de Larrea Rojas: La conquista castellana de Álava, Guipúzcoa y el Duranguesado (1199-1200). In: Revista Internacional de los Estudios Vascos. Volume 45, 2000, pp. 425-438.
• Ángel J. Martín Duque: El Fuero de San Sebastián. Tradición manuscrita y edición crítica. In: Príncípe de Viana. Volume 63, 2002, pp. 695-716.
• Ángel J. Martín Duque: Sancho VI el Sabio y el Fuero de Vitoria. In: Príncípe de Viana. Volume 63, 2002, pp. 773-790.
• Faustino Menéndez Pidal de Navascués: Los primeros sellos reales de Navarra. In: Príncípe de Viana. Volume 68, 2007, pp. 501-510.
• Dieter Berg: Richard the Lionheart. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2007.

Remarks

1. ↑ See Berg (2007), p. 71.
2. ↑ Roger von Hoveden ; William Stubbs (Ed.): Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedene. In: Rolls Series. No. 51, Vol. 2, 1868, pp. 120-131. See Berg (2007), p. 91.
3. ↑ See Fernández de Larrea Rojas (2000), pp. 469-470.
4. ↑ See Berg (2007), p. 110.
5. ↑ See Berg (2007), p. 144.
6. ↑ See Berg (2007), pp. 145–146.
7. ↑ See Berg (2007), pp. 181-182.
8. ^ Anton Chroust (Ed.): Historia de expeditione Friderici Imperatoris. In: Monumenta Germaniae Historica . SS rer. Germ. NS 5 (1928), p. 107, note 1 . The son of the King of Navarre (filius regis Navariensis) is incorrectly identified here with the name Alfons.
9. ↑ Archivo Catedral de Pamplona, Libro Redondo, f. 71v – 72r.
10. ↑ Archivo Catedral de Pamplona, Libro Redondo, f. 76r. See Martín Duque (2002), p. 782, note 38.
11. ^ Joseph de Moret: Investigaciones históricas de las antigùedades del Reino de Navarra. Pamplona 1766, p. 727 .
12. ↑ For Fernando's date of death see: Enríque Flórez (Ed.): Annales Compostellani. In: España Sagrada. Volume 23, 1767, p. 322 .

Web links

Commons : Sancho VI.  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

predecessor	Office	successor
García IV.	King of Navarre 1150–1194	Sancho VII.