FERDINAND I. (d. Io65), El Magno or "the Great," king of Castile, son of Sancho III. of Navarre, was put in possession of Castile in l028, on the murder of the last count, as the heir of his mother Elvira, daughter of a previous count of Castile. He married Sancha, sister and heiress of Bermudo, king of Leon, and on the latter's death in battle at Tamaron (1038) took pos session of Leon by right of his wife. He was recognized in Spain as emperor in 1056. The use of the title was resented by the emperor Henry IV. and by Pope Victor II., as implying a claim to the headship of Christendom, and as a usurpation on the Holy Roman empire. It did not, however, mean more than that Spain was independent of the empire, and that the sovereign of Leon was the chief of the princes of the peninsula. Although Ferdinand had grown in power by a fratricidal strife with Ber mudo of Leon, and though in 1054 he defeated and killed his brother Garcia of Navarre at Atapuerca, he was counted a pious king, on account of his victories over the Mohammedans, with which he began the period of the great reconquest. Ferdinand died on June 24, 1065, in Leon,—having laid aside his crown and royal mantle, dressed in the frock of a monk and lying on a bier, covered with ashes, which was placed before the altar of the church of Saint Isidore. He left three sons, Sancho, Al phonso and Garcia, who divided the kingdom until the murder of Sancho and the imprisonment of Garcia, when Alphonso reigned over the whole as Alphonso VI.