Abstract
James I, King of Aragon (1213–1276). He was the third king of the Crown of Aragon, which had come into existence through the union between Queen Petronila of Aragon (1157–1164) and the Count of Barcelona Ramon Berenguer IV (1137–1162). James I represents a milestone in the iconography of the Kings of Aragon, although this is due more to his successors’ promotion of him rather than to his own efforts. In order to organise and unify his dominions after the conquests of Mallorca and Valencia, he immersed himself in legal work that consolidated his legislative power whilst still allowing his territories to retain a certain degree of autonomy. He carried out an essential monetary reorganisation in which his coinage retained its obverse but altered its reverse according to the place of issue. He never succeeded in being crowned, although he featured the crown prominently in his stamps and seals and, on some coins, he added the term rex gratia Dei. In addition, he revived the sword as a royal insignia, having proclaimed the right of conquest as the basis of his sovereignty.
Highlights
The right of primogeniture, without any coronation, was sufficient for the kings of Aragon to exercise their governmental duties, but the right of conquest, which entailed the revaluation of the sword as the royal insignia, owed its power to the affirmation that the land belongs to those who have conquered it and as such it became a means of monarchical legitimisation in the territories recently acquired by the crown [13]
Driven by the need to organise and unify his vast dominions, but giving them a certain degree of autonomy, the king immersed himself in intense work that reaffirmed his legislative power in the eyes of his subjects
The reorganisation of the coinage, in which he kept the obverse but altered the reverse according to the place of issue, and the legal reform, visible, in addition to other contemporary works, in the famous In excelsis Dei thesauris, a compilation whose precious narrative miniatures show the king as a principle of righteousness who delegates his judicial powers or administers justice to those who come before him. His obsession with being crowned by the pope, a ceremony he never undertook as he refused to renew his vassalage to the Holy See, was echoed in his contemporary iconography, not as regards the crown; the one that can be seen on the horseman’s head in his seals should only be understood as the result of a desire to keep abreast of the artistic trends of the time
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Due to the absence of a legitimate successor, James I became king of Aragon at the age of five after his father died in Muret in 1213. None of his contemporaries suspected that the child would become a legendary king. During his long minority he remained under the tutelage of the Templars in the castle of Monzón, while his uncle Sancho I of Roussillon, acting as regent at the orders of Queen Maria, and advised by a council of trusted Aragonese and Catalans, put down continuous rebellions by the Aragonese nobility, who even took the king prisoner in 1223. During the 63 years of his reign, he expanded the Crown throughout the Mediterranean, earning himself the name of Conqueror, and he laid the social, political and economic foundations that stabilised the kingdom, whose finances had been ruined by his father Peter II (1196–1213)
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