Spain. Spanish States. Kingdom of Castile and Leon Ferdinand (Fernando) IV – King: 25 April 1295 – 7 September 1312 Billon Silver Pepion 19mm (0.72 grams) Toledo mint Reference: C&C 1223; FAB.326 Castle. Lion.
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Billon is an alloy of a precious metal (most commonly silver) with a majority base metal content (such as copper). It is used chiefly for making coins, medals, and token coins. The word comes from the French bille. The use of billon coins dates from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages. During the 6th and 5th centuries BC, some cities on Lesbos Island used coins made of 60% copper and 40% silver. Billon coins are perhaps best known from the Roman Empire, where progressive debasements of the Roman denarius and the Roman provincial tetradrachm.
Ferdinand IV of Castile (6 December 1285 – 7 September 1312) called the Summoned (el Emplazado), was a King of Castile and León from 1295 until his death.
During his minority, his upbringing and the custody of his person were entrusted to his mother, Queen María de Molina, while his tutorship was entrusted to the Infante Henry of Castile the Senator, son of King Fernando III of Castile. At that time, and also for the rest of his reign, his mother tried to placate the nobility, confronted her son’s enemies, and repeatedly prevented Ferdinand IV from being dethroned.
He had to face the insubordination of the nobility, led at numerous times by his uncle, the Infante John of Castile, Lord of Valencia de Campos and by Juan Núñez II de Lara, who were supported in some occasions by Juan Manuel, Prince of Villena and grandson of the King Ferdinand III.
Like his predecessors on the throne, Ferdinand IV continued the Reconquista and, although he failed to conquer Algeciras in 1309, he captured the city of Gibraltar that same year, and in 1312 the city of Alcaudete was also conquered. During the Cortes of Valladolid of 1312, he promoted the reform of the administration of justice, and that of all areas of administration, while attempting to strengthen the royal authority to the detriment of the nobility. He died in Jaén on 7 September 1312 aged 26, and his mortal remains are now in the Royal Collegiate Church of Saint Hippolytus.
The Crown of Castile was a medieval state in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then Castilian king, Ferdinand III, to the vacant Leonese throne. It continued to exist as a separate entity after the personal union in 1469 of the crowns of Castile and Aragon with the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs up to the promulgation of the Nueva Planta decrees by Philip V in 1715.
The Indies, Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea were also a part of the Crown of Castile when transformed from lordships to kingdoms of the heirs of Castile in 1506, with the Treaty of Villafáfila, and upon the death of Ferdinand the Catholic.
The title of “King of Castile” remained in use by the Habsburg rulers during the 16th and 17th centuries. Charles I was King of Aragon, Majorca, Valencia, and Sicily, and Count of Barcelona, Roussillon and Cerdagne, as well as King of Castile and León, 1516-1556.
In the early 18th century, Philip of Bourbon won the War of the Spanish Succession and imposed unification policies over the Crown of Aragon, supporters of their enemies. This unified the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile into the kingdom of Spain. Even though the Nueva Planta decrees did not formally abolish the Crown of Castile, the country of (Castile and Aragon) was called “Spain” by both contemporaries and historians.
“King of Castile” also remains part of the full title of Felipe VI of Spain, the current King of Spain according to the Spanish constitution of 1978, in the sense of titles, not of states.
The Kingdom of León was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in AD 910 when the Christian princes of Asturias along the northern coast of the peninsula shifted their capital from Oviedo to the city of León. The Kings of León fought civil wars, wars against neighbouring kingdoms as well as campaigns to repel invasions by both the Moors and the Vikings, to protect their kingdom’s changing fortunes.
García is the first of the kings described by the charters as reigning in León. It is generally assumed that the old Asturian kingdom was divided between the three sons of Alfonso III of Asturias: García (León), Ordoño (Galicia) and Fruela (Asturias), as all three participated in the deposition of their father. When García died in 913, León went to Ordoño, who now ruled both León and Galicia as Ordoño II. At Ordoño’s death in 924, the throne went to his brother Fruela II (924-5), who died of leprosy a year later. Fruela’s death in 925 was followed by a civil war, after which Alfonso, the eldest son of Ordoño II, emerged as the new king Alfonso IV, ruling from 925-932. After a further power struggle, Ramiro, the younger brother of Alfonso IV, became king in 932, having captured his brother Alfonso, as well as the three sons of Fruela II – Alfonso, Ordoño and Ramiro. Alfonso IV may have died soon after, but he left two infant sons, called Ordoño and Fruela. When Ramiro died in 951, he left two sons by two different wives. When the elder son Ordoňo III, who ruled from 951-56, suddenly died aged little more than thirty, he was succeeded by his younger half-brother Sancho I “The Fat” (956-66), as Ordoño had failed to produce a legitimate heir.
Sancho’s son Ramiro had been born in 961 and was only about five years old when his father died. He was also the only legitimate member of the direct family line. His mother Teresa Ansúrez had retired into the recently founded monastery of San Pelayo, of which her sister-in-law Elvira was the abbess. Another nun, Sancho’s full sister Elvira Ramírez emerged as regent during his long minority. Under the regency of Elvira, fresh raids of the Northmen were repelled from the coast of Galicia. In 968, Gunrod of Norway, the Viking leader, established himself on Galician soil and held out for a year and a half: Bishop Sisnando of Compostela died fighting him, and his successor St Rudesind carried on the struggle until Count Gonzalo Sánchez defeated the invaders and killed Gunrod himself.[2] Count Sánchez destroyed the entire fleet of Gunrod. In 1008 Norman Vikings attacked Galicia, destroying Santiago de Compostela and seventeen other towns, while Olaf Haraldsson of Norway raided Spain’s Atlantic coast.[3] There are also reports of a series of attacks on the Christian lands of north Spain in 1028, 1032, and 1038, and the Christian kingdoms in the north commonly used Vikings as mercenaries in their internecine wars.[4]
The County of Castile separated in 931, the County of Portugal separated to become the independent Kingdom of Portugal in 1139 and the eastern, inland part of León was joined to the Kingdom of Castile in 1230. From 1296 to 1301, the Kingdom of León was again independent and after the re-union with Castile remained a Crown until 1833, but as part of a united Spain from 1479. In the Royal Decree of 30 November 1833, the Kingdom of León was considered one of the Spanish regions and divided into the provinces of León, Zamora and Salamanca. In 1978, these three provinces of the region of León were included along with six provinces of the historic region of Old Castile to create the autonomous community of Castile and León. However, significant parts of the former kingdom today integrate these three provinces and the autonomous communities of Extremadura, Galicia and Asturias, in Spain, in addition to northern Portugal.
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