Life
His strange title is given to him in the chronicles because of a story in which he tyrannically puts to death two brothers named Carvajal, and was given a time (plazo) by them in which to answer for his crime in the next world. But the tale is not contemporary, and is an obvious copy of the story told of Jacques de Molay, grand-master of the Temple, and Philip IV of France.
His reign came at a time of anarchy. From 1296 to 1301 the Kingdom of León was independent under Juan I of León, being crowned as King of León, Galicia and Seville. He owed his escape from the violence of competitors and nobles, partly to the tact and undaunted bravery of his mother Maria de Molina, and partly to the loyalty of the citizens of Ávila, who gave him refuge within their walls. As a king he proved ungrateful to his mother, and weak as a ruler.
In 1302 he married Constance, daughter of King Denis of Portugal. Their children were:
- Eleanor (1307–1359), married King Alfonso IV of Aragon
- Constance (1308–1310)
- Alfonso XI of Castile (1311–1350)
In 1309 he captured Gibraltar from the Moors (who had held it since 711) with the help of Alonso Pérez de Guzmán of Aragón. He died suddenly in his tent at Jaén when preparing for a raid into the Emirate of Granada on 7 September 1312.
Read more about this topic: Ferdinand IV Of Castile
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“We shall make mistakes, but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principles. I remember that my old school master Dr. Peabody said in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled, he said things in life will not always run smoothly, sometimes we will be rising toward the heights and all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great thing to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It’s the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)