Aragon.— Pedro ΓV. (1317-1387), surnamed “the Ceremonious,” succeeded his father Alfonso IV. in 1336, placing the crown upon his own head at Saragossa to make it quite plain that he did not hold of the pope. In 1344 he deposed his brother-in-law Jayme from the throne of Majorca, and again made the Balearic Isles, Cerdagne, and Roussillon directly subj ect to the crown of Aragon. In 1346 jealousy of his brother Jayme led him to alter the succession in favour of his daughters, but two powerful unions or leagues in Aragon and Valencia compelled him in the following year anew to recognize the legitimate heir-presumptive. The victory of Epila, however, in 1348 enabled him to triumph over his factious nobles and to cancel the privileges they had extorted from him. In 1351 Pedro, desiring to strengthen his precarious hold upon the island of Sardinia, entered into an alliance with Venice, and began hostilities against Genoa, which, carried on at intervals for many years, were definitively terminated only by his successor. In 1356 a breach of neutrality by some Catalan ships at San Lucar led to a war with the king of Castile, which was carried on with occasional suspensions until 1375, when the infanta Leonora of Aragon was married to Don Juan (afterwards John I.) of Castile. In 1377 Pedro succeeded in reconquering Sicily after the death of Frederick III., but, to avoid the threatened interdict of Urban VI., he ceded the island to Martin, his grandson, retaining the suzerainty only. In 1382 he sent troops to Greece to seize, on his behalf, the duchy of Athens. Pedro died at Barcelona on 5th January 1387, and was succeeded by his son John I. He left a curious history of his reign, written in Catalan, which has been printed by Carbonell in his Chroniques de Espanyα (1547).

Three other kings of Aragon bore this name. Pedro I. succeeded his father Sancho Ramirez on the throne of Aragon and Navarre in 1094, and died in 1104. The leading event of his reign was the conquest of Huesca (1096). Pedro II. (1174-1213) succeeded his father Alphonso II. in 1196. In November 1204 he was crowned in St Peter’s, Rome, by Innocent III., in return for which honour he declared his kingdom feudatory of the Roman see and promised an annual tribute, not, however, without a strong protest on the part of his subjects, whose hostile demonstrations in the following year he had difficulty in repressing. In 1209 he purchased peace with Sancho VII. of Navarre, and in 1212 he, along with that sovereign, gave valuable help to Alphonso of Castile in securing the splendid victory over the Arabs at Navas de Tolosa. In the following year, having taken up arms on behalf of his brother-in-law, Count Raymond of Toulouse, he was slain in the disastrous battle of Muret (12th September 1213). He was succeeded by his only son, Jayme I., “el Conquistador.” Pedro III. (1236-1285), son of Jayme I. and grandson of Pedro II., succeeded to the crowns of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia in 1276. In 1262 he had married Constance, daughter of Manfred, king of the Sicilies, and on the strength-of this alliance he took advantage of the Sicilian Vespers to lay claim to the kingdom of Sicily. This involved him in a ruinous war, in the course of which his dissatisfied subjects united to assert their ancient “fueros” or privileges, exacting from him at Saragossa in 1283 the “Privilegio General ”, which in spirit and import may be compared to the English Great Charter. Charles of Valois, invested by the pope with the crown of Aragon, sought to invade the kingdom, but was repulsed both by land and sea. Charles’s death in 1285, which terminated the war, was followed by that of Pedro in the same year.

Castile and Leon. — Pedro I. (1333-1369), commonly surnamed “the Cruel,” but sometimes referred to as “the Justiciary,” was the only legitimate son of Alphonso XI., and was born at Burgos on 30th August 1333. When raised to the throne at Seville by his father’s premature death before Gibraltar (29th March 1350), Pedro was a mere lad, with exceptionally small experience of courts and camps, having lived in comparative retirement along with his mother, Doña Maria of Portugal, in the Andalucian capital, while his illegitimate brothers, the children of Leonora de Guzman, the . eldest of whom were Don Enrique (Henry), count of Trastamara, and Don Fadrique (Frederick), grandmaster of Santiago, had remained beside Alphonso, and had accompanied him on his warlike expeditions. At the beginning of his reign he was thus, almost of necessity, compelled to abandon the conduct of affairs to more experienced hands; by the skilful policy, accordingly, of the powerful and ambitious Juan Alonso de Alburquerque, who had been his father’s chancellor and prime minister, his many enemies and rivals were, for a time at least, successfully kept at bay. The king, however, soon began to assert his independence; whereupon the minister, remembering how helpful a royal mistress had been for the furtherance of his own ends during the preceding reign, did not scruple to encourage Pedro’s passion for the yöung, well-born, and beautiful Maria de Padilla, even after his marriage with Blanche de Bourbon had been arranged. His experiment proved a disastrous one, and not least so to himself. The influence of Maria and of her relations, which rapidly became great, was soon turned against the too politic Alburquerque; and, as a first step towards his dismissal from power, they succeeded in making him seem less indispensable by effecting a superficial reconciliation between the king and his brothers. Then, on the minister’s remonstrating against the conduct of Pedro in deserting Blanche for his mistress almost immediately after his marriage at Valladolid in June 1354, a complete change of administration took place, and Alburquerque retired to his estates. Shortly afterwards he was joined by the king’s brothers Enrique and Fadrique in raising the standard of revolt in Castile; in this formidable movement they were speedily joined by Pedro’s cousins, the infantes of Aragon, as well as by increasing numbers of the ricos hombres and caballeros of the kingdom, and by several of the towns, their grievances being his repudiation of Blanche, his deposition of Alburquerque, and the murder of Juan Nuñez de Prado, the master of Calatrava, for which he was believed to be responsible. The cortes of Toro accordingly asked him to take back his queen and dismiss the Padillas; and so general was the national feeling in this matter that even his own mother deserted his cause, and on his giving evasive replies he found himself before the end of the year practically stripped of all his real authority, surrounded by officials of his enemies’ choosing, and virtually a prisoner in their hands. He succeeded, however, in making his escape from Toro to Segovia with a handful of followers in the following year, and the divergence of interest that soon arose to separate the Aragonese princes from the bastard sons of Alphonso XI. so wrought in his favour that he was soon able (1356) to recover all the authority he had ever had, and to secure at least a transitory peace by the policy of reckless assassination which years previously he had inaugurated while Alburquerque was still his minister, and which he brought to a climax in the cold-blooded murder of his brother Don Fadrique at Seville in 1358, the tragedy to which he is said to have been specially indebted for his unenviable surname. In 1356 he already found himself strong enough to enter upon a war with his namesake Pedro IV. of Aragon, and, with inconsiderable intervals of truce brought about through the intervention of the papal legate, he continued to carry it on for several years. In 1365 he was still campaigning beyond the borders of his kingdom when Castile was invaded by the “free companies” of French and English troops under Du Guesclin and Calverley on behalf of Don Enrique, whose cause had now been espoused by France. He returned only to find himself practically unthroned, and towards the close of 1366 he sailed from Coruña for Guienne almost unaccompanied, save by his three daughters, but taking with him a considerable quantity of money and jewels. He was befriended in his exile by the Black Prince, and by liberal promises obtained his alliance and assurances of material help; the English troops accordingly crossed the Pyrenees in the following spring, and, by the bloody victory of Najera or Navarrete near Logroño (13th April 1367), once more restored him to his kingdom. Pedro, however, was unwilling or unable to implement the bargain he had made, and by his arrogant demeanour soon alienated his chivalrous ally; before the close of the year Don Enrique had again begun to collect his forces, while the Black Prince, injured and indignant, turned his face homewards. A final battle between Pedro and his brother took place at Montiel (13th March 1369), with the result that the former was driven for shelter into the fortress. Ten days afterwards he was induced to visit the camp of Enrique by illusory hopes of a favourable treaty through Du Guesclin; the brothers, who had not seen each other for fifteen years, met for the last time; angry words passed between them, soon they came to blows, and in the desperate struggle that ensued Don Pedro met his death. Pedro was in no way remarkable either as a soldier or as a ruler of men, and his character, so odious in the one feature expressed by his only too well deserved surname, presents singularly few redeeming traits; it is not even picturesque. The best that can be alleged by way of apology for him and excuse for his barren reign is the untowardness of the circumstances of his birth, education, and accession. To a narrow and uncultivated mind like his “the tyrant’s plea” could hardly ever have appealed with greater plausibility. It is significant, however, that in Spain itself there are two nearly opposite points of view from which Pedro appears not as “el Cruel” but as “el Justiciero.” On the one hand, the common people of Andalucia among whom he lived, the Jews whose com· merce he encouraged, the Moors whom his very want of religion enabled him to tolerate, have helped to keep alive the tradition of the substantial if occasionally capricious and whimsical justice he often delighted personally to administer. The other point of view is that of such monarchs as Isabella “la Catolica” and Philip II., who could not but be grateful to him for all he had done to weaken the power of the nobles of Castile.

The chief source for the incidents of the reign of Don Pedro is the Chronicles of Castile, by Pero Lopez de Ayala, of which there are two redactions known as the Vulgar and the Abreviada. These form the basis of Prosper Mérimée’s Histoire de Don Pédre, Premier Roi de Castille (1848; 2d ed. 1865; Eng. trans., anon., 1849).

Portugal.— Pedro I. (1320-1367) was the son of Alphonso IV. and Beatrice of Castile, and in 1339 married Constance, daughter of the duke of Peñafiel and marquis of Villena. The story of his passion for Inez de Castro, of his supposed marriage with her, of her cruel murder in 1355, and of the exhumation and coronation of her dead body has been told elsewhere (see vol. v. p. 202). He succeeded to the throne in 1357 and died in 1367, after a peaceful and comparatively uneventful reign of ten years.

For other sovereigns bearing this name see Brazil and Portugal.