Ramiro II ( 900 – 1 January 951), son of
Ordoño II and Elvira Menendez, was a
King of León
In the reign of Ordoño I of Asturias (850–866), the kingdom began to be known as that of León. In 910, an independent Kingdom of León was founded when the king of Asturias divided his territory amongst his three sons.
Below follows a ...
from 931 until his death. Initially titular king only of a lesser part of the kingdom, he gained the crown of León (and with it,
Galicia) after supplanting his brother
Alfonso IV and cousin
Alfonso Fróilaz in 931. The scant ''
Anales castellanos primeros'' are a primary source for his reign.
He actively campaigned against the
Moors
The term Moor is an Endonym and exonym, exonym used in European languages to designate the Muslims, Muslim populations of North Africa (the Maghreb) and the Iberian Peninsula (particularly al-Andalus) during the Middle Ages.
Moors are not a s ...
, who referred to him as the Devil due to his ferocity and fervor in battle. He defeated the hosts of the
Umayyad
The Umayyad Caliphate or Umayyad Empire (, ; ) was the second caliphate established after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the Rashidun caliphs, was also a membe ...
caliph,
Abd al-Rahman III, at the Battle of Simancas (939).
Succession
When, shortly before his death in 910,
Alfonso III of Asturias
Alfonso III (20 December 910), called the Great (), was king of Asturias from 866 until his death. He was the son and successor of Ordoño I. After his death, the Kingdom of Asturias was split between his sons, with García inheriting León, ...
was forced by his sons to abdicate, the
Kingdom of Asturias
The Kingdom of Asturias was a kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula founded by the nobleman Pelagius who traditionally has been described as being of Visigothic stock. Modern research is leaning towards the view that Pelagius was of Hispano-Roman ...
descended into a period of successional crises among the royal family and their supporters from the regional
marcher aristocracies. The kingdom was initially partitioned, with
García I receiving
León,
Ordoño II Galicia and
Fruela II the
Asturian heartland.
With the successive deaths of García I (914) and Ordoño (924), these were re-consolidated, Fruela ruling the entirety of what would thenceforth be referred to as the
Kingdom of León
The Kingdom of León was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in 910 when the Christian princes of Kingdom of Asturias, Asturias along the Bay of Biscay, northern coast of the peninsula ...
. His death the next year, 925, again brought about disputed succession and partition. A younger brother, Ramiro, appears to have married Fruela's widow and adopted the royal title, but gained no traction. Instead it was the next generation that rose to the forefront.
As eldest son of the prior king,
Alfonso Fróilaz was crowned but proved unable to extend his power to the entire kingdom and was marginalized by his cousins the three sons of Ordoño II, who had the backing of the
Kingdom of Pamplona
The Kingdom of Navarre ( ), originally the Kingdom of Pamplona, occupied lands on both sides of the western Pyrenees, with its northernmost areas originally reaching the Atlantic Ocean (Bay of Biscay), between present-day Spain and France.
The me ...
. These brothers again partitioned the portion of the kingdom they controlled: the eldest,
Sancho Ordóñez, ruling in Galicia,
Alfonso IV in León, and Ramiro II in the newly conquered lands to the south (
al-Andalus
Al-Andalus () was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The name refers to the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most o ...
chronicler
Ibn Hayyan
Abū Marwān Ḥayyān ibn Khalaf ibn Ḥusayn ibn Ḥayyān al-Andalusī al-Qurṭubī () (987–1075), usually known as Ibn Hayyan, was an Arab Muslim historian from Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus () was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Pen ...
located his court at
Coimbra
Coimbra (, also , , or ), officially the City of Coimbra (), is a city and a concelho, municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2021 census was 140,796, in an area of .
The fourth-largest agglomerated urban area in Po ...
).
When Sancho died in 929 his kingdom was absorbed by Alfonso IV, but in a quick succession of events taking place in Leon and Zamora, Ramiro forced the abdication of Alfonso IV, and had him and Fruela II's three sons blinded in order to make them incapable of ruling.
Reign
Ramiro stood out as an excellent military commander, and expanded his territories south to a remarkable extent (''e.g.'', into Salamanca and Ledesma) as well as founding or repopulating frontier strongholds (''e.g.'', Osma, Clunia). Ramiro masterminded a
Pamplona
Pamplona (; ), historically also known as Pampeluna in English, is the capital city of the Navarre, Chartered Community of Navarre, in Spain.
Lying at near above sea level, the city (and the wider Cuenca de Pamplona) is located on the flood pl ...
/
León coalition that defeated a joint
Andalusian counter-offensive in the
Battle of Simancas (939). This victory allowed the advance of the Leonese border of the
Duero
The Douro (, , , ; ; ) is the largest river of the Iberian Peninsula by discharge. It rises near Duruelo de la Sierra in the Spanish province of Soria, meanders briefly south, then flows generally west through the northern part of the Meseta ...
to the
Tormes.
In the last years of his reign, he lost the support of his Pamplona brother-in-law/son-in-law
García Sánchez I, who then helped another brother-in-law, the count
Fernán González of Castile, to gain brief ''de facto'' independence. Still in 950 Ramiro launched an expedition to the valley of the Edge and defeated the Cordovan Umayyads at
Talavera.
Family
Ramiro II married twice. His first wife was a member of the Galician nobility and his first cousin, Adosinda Gutiérrez, daughter of Gutier Osóriz and Ildonzia Menéndez (a sister of Ramiro's mother, queen Elvira Menéndez, and also aunt of
San Rosendo). Ramiro's second marriage to
Urraca Sánchez of Pamplona, daughter of
Sancho I of Pamplona and
Toda, brought him an alliance with Pamplona. By Adosinda, Ramiro had at least two sons, the poorly-documented Bermudo who died during his father's lifetime, and
Ordoño III, Ramiro's successor, plus presumably also a daughter,
Teresa
Teresa (also Theresa, Therese; ) is a feminine given name.
It originates in the Iberian Peninsula in late antiquity. Its derivation is uncertain, it may be derived from Classical Greek, Greek θερίζω (''therízō'') "to harvest or rea ...
, the second queen of
García Sánchez I of Pamplona. By Urraca, Ramiro had two children,
Sancho I of León and
Elvira Ramírez. These marriages would set the stage for further succession conflict, with Ordoño and his son
Vermudo II supported by the Galician nobility, while Elvira, Sancho and his son
Ramiro III relied on support from Urraca's relatives in Pamplona and Córdoba.
Ramiro figures prominently in the romantic poem, the ''
Miragaia'', which tells the apocryphal story of Ramiro bedding Ortega, the daughter of a local Arab lord. By her he is given a son
Aboazar, the progenitor of the
Galician/
Portuguese Maia family. This Maia tradition was subsequently linked to another legend, that told in the ''
Cantar de los Siete Infantes de Lara'' by giving Ramiro and Ortega a daughter Ortega Ramírez, who is made to marry Gustios Gonzalez, grandfather of the legendary ''infantes'' and of that tale's hero, Mudarra González. Subsequent elaboration of this legend gave further supposed descendants among the
Lara family, but these Lara connections are dismissed by modern scholars.
Notes
References
Sources
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ramiro 02 of Leon
900s births
951 deaths
Year of birth uncertain
10th-century Leonese monarchs
Burials in the Royal Pantheon at the Basilica of San Isidoro
Sons of emperors
Astur-Leonese dynasty