Bermudo III of León

Who was Bermudo III of León?

Bermudo III, king of León, son of Alfonso V of León by his first wife Elvira Mendes, was the last scion of Peter of Cantabria to rule in the Leonese kingdom. He was called Emperor in Galicia in 1025.

In 1029, Count García Sánchez of Castile was about to be married to Sancha of León, the elder sister of Bermudo, an arrangement apparently sanctioned by the king of Navarre, when the count was murdered in the city of León. Sancho III of Navarre then claimed the county of Castile in his wife's name and installed in it their son, Ferdinand, as the new count of Castile. The Navarrese king's policy turned to pure aggrandisement—sometimes ostensibly on behalf of his son and at other times simply on his own behalf. He seized the borderlands between the Cea and the Pisuerga rivers, right above León capital, long a bone of contention between León and Castile. After he had forced the marriage between Fernando and Sancha in 1032, those lands went to Castile as part of her also forced dowry. In 1034, he wrested the city of León itself from Bermudo, who retreated into Galicia. By the time Sancho died in 1035, the meseta north of the Duero was dominated by the Pyrenean pocket kingdom of Navarre.